1. The Complainant has established that it had prior rights in the trademark SURVEYMONKEY. The Panel finds that Complainant's trademark is entirely incorporated in the disputed domain names. This thus amounts to a case of typosquatting. The disputed domain names reflect intentional typographical errors, as the punctuation between the country code abbreviations "fr" and "es" and the second level domains, is intentionally omitted. As commonly used for localization, when typing fr.surveymonkey.com or es.surveymonkey.com, the localized version of the Complainant’s website would appear. In any event, the addition of the generic terms “fr” and “es” do not preclude a finding that the disputed domain names are confusingly similar to Complainant's SURVEYMONKEY registered trademark. It has been persistently decided that the mere addition of a geographic descriptor does not change the confusing nature of the similarity, see e.g. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Lars Stork, WIPO Case No. D2000-0628; America Online, Inc. v. Dolphin@Heart, Telstra Corporation Limited v. Ozurls, WIPO Case No. D2001-0046, Playboy Enterprises International, Inc. v. Zeynel Demirtas, WIPO Case No. D2007-0768.
This Panel therefore finds that the first requirement of paragraph 4(a)(i) of the Policy is satisfied.
2. The Panel finds that the SURVEYMONKEY trademark is distinctive. The Complainant’s assertions that the Respondent is not commonly known by the disputed domain names and is not affiliated with nor authorised by the Complainant are sufficient to constitute a prima facie showing of absence of rights or legitimate interest in the disputed domain names on the part of the Respondent. The evidentiary burden therefore shifts to the Respondent to show by concrete evidence that it does have rights or legitimate interests in that name. The Respondent has made no attempt to do so.
Furthermore, the Respondent does not appear to make any legitimate use of the domain names for non-commercial activities.
Similarly like the Panel in UDRP decision No. 100858 SurveyMonkey Inc. vs Domain Admin, Private Registrations Aktien Gesellschaft, this Panel finds that the content displayed on the relevant web pages at the time of the complaint reflects no bona fide use or offering of goods or services.
Therefore, in the absence of any response from the Respondent indicating the contrary, the Panel finds that Complainant has satisfied the burden of proof with respect to paragraph 4(a)(ii) of the Policy.
3. The Respondent is using the domain names in order to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to their website by creating a likelihood of confusion with Complainant’s trademark, which is an indicator of bad faith according to paragraph 4 (b)(iv). The Respondent uses the disputed domain names for pay-per-click pages including links to the websites of Complainant’s competitors.
The Complainant provided evidence that the Respondent registered the disputed domain names with the clear intention to benefit from the likelihood of confusion with the Complainant’s trademark.
Considering the foregoing, the Panel concludes that the Respondent registered and is using the Domain Names in bad faith and that the requirements of paragraph 4(a)(iii) of the Policy are satisfied.
|