It’s playoff season in Canada, and some hockey fans cheer when the players brawl. The good folks at UFC have simplified things by doing away with the hockey and all the other distractions, and just giving the fans what they want: big guys hitting each other. 

A Kelowna, BC, man registered the domain name ULTIMATEFIGHTINGCHAMPIONSHIPS.CA and seven other variations using the .US, .INFO and .BIZ extensions.  Zuffa LLC, the company that owns the UFC trade-marks, approached the registrant with an offer to settle. When the man refused, Zuffa filed a complaint under the CDRP – the dot-ca dispute resolution procedure. In the recent decision in Zuffa LLC v David Bruce [PDF], the panelist had to decide if the domain name had been registered “in bad faith” which is typically one of the more difficult elements to prove. 

In this case, the registrant had admitted in email correspondence with Zuffa that he hoped to make a great deal of money from the registrations, that he was well aware of the UFC brand, and he had registered other offending domain names. The panelist had no trouble concluding that this qualified as “bad faith”.  The domain name was ordered transferred to the trade-mark owner.  That’s one down, seven to go. 

Calgary – 07:00 MDT