Ticket To A Domain Name Dispute

Complainant, Ticketmaster, is a global leader in live entertainment ticketing and marketing event ticket sales, operating in 20 global markets and providing ticket sales, resale services, marketing and distribution through "www.ticketmaster.com" -- one of the largest e-commerce sites on the Internet.  Complainant holds federal and foreign trademark registrations for the mark "TICKETMASTER".

The disputed domain name, "tiicketmaster.com", was successfully transferred to the Complainant based upon the Panel's finding that: (i) the disputed domain was confusingly similar to the TICKETMASTER marks given its spelling, (ii) the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the domain, particularly when taking the fame of the TICKETMASTER marks into consideration which lead the Panel to find that Respondent's choice of the disputed domain name could not have resulted from mere coincidence, and (iii) the disputed domain name was registered and used in bad faith, based upon the Panel's review of a screen capture of the website "www.tiicketmaster.com" provided by Complainant, which showed that the disputed domain provided advertising sites that offered links to various businesses, including competing ticketing sites.  At the time of the Panel's decision, the disputed domain resolved to an error page.  Under the circumstances, this type of "passive holding" was further indicative of bad faith use according to prevailing opinions in numerous UDRP panels.  Ticketmaster v. Wang Xiao Ping, WIPO Case No. D20088-150