ABELSoft Victorious In Domain Name Dispute 

 

In ABELSoft Corporation v Gabi Fish o/a Health-pages.ca, a Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) domain name dispute resolution panelist ordered the transfer of the domain name <abelsoft.ca> to ABELSoft Corporation. 

 

ABELSoft is the largest provider of dental and medical software in Canada and is the owner of the trademark ABELSOFT.  The panelist found that Fish, who had registered the domain name <abelsoft.ca>, was also the CEO of a company that purported to offer software solutions for medical practices, and that it was reasonable to infer that Fish registered the domain name to disrupt ABELSoft's business. 

 

The May 7, 2008 edition of the World Trademark Report, a publication that reports on important trademark law

developments around the globe, noted the precedential value of the case stating: "This decision should be viewed positively by trademark owners seeking to protect their brands under the CDRP, as it appears to put forward a somewhat lower threshold approach as to what constitutes bad-faith use." (See the full decision at http://www.cira.ca/en/dpr-decisions/00095-ablesoft.ca.pdf.)