Balenciaga,is a fashion house founded by Cristóbal Balenciaga, a Spanish designer.Christian Dior himself referred to Balenciaga as "the master of us all" .
Being the complainant in this case,the fashion house submitted a complaint with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center requesting the domain name balenciagahandbags.com to be transferred to them.The company owns many trademark registration all around the world for "Balenciaga".Therefore it is more than obvious that the disputed domain name is confusingly similar to their company.What makes you wonder about the intentions the respondent had when registering the domain name is the fact that he was involved in other UDRP decisions in which he has been found to have acted in bad faith.Moreover the Panel thought the respondent registered the domain name to divert users seeking information about Balenciaga’s products.
Therefore,the WIPO Panel concluded that the respondent registered the disputed domain name in bad faith and ordered it to transfer the usage rights to Balenciaga.
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