Internet Giant TenCent Domain Dispute Mishap

TenCent bumbles case for UDRP submission.
　

 It’s possible you’ve never heard of TenCent. I hadn’t heard of it until reading The Economist’s recent spread on the internet in China.

But it’s big in China. Huge. With a market cap of $60 billion (U.S.), it’s right up there with Facebook in terms of valuation.

Yet TenCent Holdings failed to win the domain name TenCentGames.com in a UDRP, despite the domain holder not responding to the complaint.

TenCent successfully convinced the World Intellectual Property Organization panel that the domain was similar to its trademark and that the domain owner had no rights or legitimate interests in the domain. But it bumbled its case for the domain being registered and used in bad faith. This is despite the respondent having allegedly registered other domains similar to TenCent’s marks.

The company made plenty of assertions but failed to attach the necessary evidence. It also relied on marks registered after the domain was registered and failed to provide basic evidence to show its prior common law rights to the marks.

This is the third case filed by TenCent (all of which have been decided since January). It won the first two, but dropped the ball on this one.