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11 August 2016Africa

Roche wins cybersquatting case

Roche has defeated a cybersquatter in a dispute centring on 18 domain names that infringed trademarks owned by the pharmaceutical company.

In a decision published yesterday, August 10, Roche was granted a transfer of the domains.

The domains included Roche-owned trademarks for five drugs: Boniva (ibandronate sodium), Cellcept (mycophenolate mofetil), Herceptin (trastuzumab), Lucentis (ranibizumab injection) and Mabthera (rituximab).

Examples of the domains include buyherceptin.info, buy-lucentis.com and buy-mabthera.com.

The complaint, which claimed the domains had been registered in bad faith, was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Arbitration and Me diation Center on May 30.

The respondent, named as Privacy Hero, did not respond to the allegations.

According to panellist Gregor Vos, the domain names were too similar to Roche-owned trademarks, the respondent had no rights or legitimate interests in them and they had been registered and used in bad faith.

Vos wrote: “The undisputed circumstances outlined by the complainants have provided support for finding registration and use in bad faith, and it is not possible to conceive of any plausible actual or contemplated active use of the domain names by the respondent that would not be illegitimate.”