It's hard to believe, but it actually happened. International Medical Group Inc., an American company which owns an IMG trademark, launched a UDRP action to seek the transfer of not-img-europe.com, but also of... unlicensed.info, byebyejoe.com, bookwriter.org, treatingcustomersfairly.info and jbclaims.com.* And stated that these "domain names are confusingly similar to Complainant’s IMG mark"!!!
Of course the panel rejected the complaint over these completely unrelated names. But it did not add that the complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding, as it is allowed to do pursuant to Policy ¶ 15(e)!
It seems that the complainant here wanted to put the hands on all the names of the defendant, to have an exemplary sanction.
Regarding not-img-europe.com, the panel simply wrote that "the inclusion of hyphens, generic terms, and geographic terms do not distinguish a disputed domain name from a complainant’s mark". Because the generic word here was "not", this could be discussed further...
NAF 1106364, Jan. 1, 2008
* img-sucks.info was also mentioned in the complaint, but the panel found that, contrary to the other disputed names, this one "does not contain any information in its WHOIS record that is either a variation on any of the Respondent’s aliases or points to or shares registrant or contact information that is identical to, similar to, or directs Internet users in any way to the other disputed domain names"
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