GENEVA—A single-person panel of the Arbitration and Mediation Center at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland, ruled in favor of the parent firm of JustFor.fans in a trademark infringement dispute centered around a domain registered in Estonia. The arbitration ruling was officially issued in a letter last Wednesday.
Through its legal team attached to the French law firm Adsto, JFF Publications LLC filed a complaint over the summer against an individual named Ogandi Peraza, an Estonian who registered "justforfans.app." Peraza registered the infringing domain name in 2021 through the San Francisco-based, ICANN-accredited domain registrar Cloudflare Inc.
In 2023, an entity tied to Peraza registered the trademark "JUSTFORFANS" with the Estonian Patent Office, based in the nation's capital city of Tallinn. Note that the firm JFF Publications owns a similar trademark, "JUSTFOR.FANS," in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France. The trademark in the U.S. dates back to February 2018.
Such infringement prompted JFF Publications to file a complaint with the Arbitration and Mediation Center on June 16. Following the investigation, Peraza did not respond to requests from WIPO's Arbitration and Mediation Center. This worked in JFF's favor, prompting panelist Rebecca Slater to transfer ownership of "justforfans.app" to JustFor.fans.
It is also revealed that Peraza utilized the infringing domain name to promote an apparent digital subscription platform under the same name as JFF Publications' marquee website.
"Having reviewed the available record, the panel finds the complainant has established a prima facie case that the Respondent lacks rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name," Slater writes in the determination letter. "This finding is reinforced by the respondent's use of the disputed domain name to provide a subscription service and platform which is very similar to the complainant’s offering. This amounts to 'opportunistic bad faith' under the policy [of WIPO].
"The panel finds it unlikely that the disputed domain name was registered without knowledge of the complainant and its unregistered JUSTFORFANS mark, given the reputation of the complainant and the composition of the disputed domain name," Slater adds, authorizing the domain's transfer of ownership.