Professional services company KPMG has recovered a domain name that was deemed to be confusingly similar to its registered trademark and used as part of an email scam.
The company recovered the domain kpmg-attorneys.com following a dispute at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center.
KPMG, which owns more than 480 worldwide trademark registrations containing the name ‘KPMG’, filed its complaint on May 16.
It said the respondent, a Paris-based woman named Astrid Constant, registered the domain on May 3 this year.
According to the judgment, the disputed domain does not resolve to an active website and is alleged to have been “used in connection with a fraudulent email scheme”.
KPMG claimed the disputed domain “was clearly registered and used in bad faith and undoubtedly for criminal commercial gain.”
In a judgment handed down on July 1, but published on July 6, panellist Nicolas Ulmer said the domain included the entirety of the complainant's “widely known trademark” and had been registered in bad faith.
According to Ulmer, the alleged scam email is “laconic” but makes use of the disputed domain and implies that there is an attorney to be contacted at that address.
He added: “While the email is not definitively proven to be tied to the respondent it does provide evidence of a specific abusive use of the disputed domain name.”
KPMG, domain name, WIPO, cybersquatting
