January 17, 2018
Our IP litigation team has secured a major victory before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center in a case brought against the firm relating to an investigation and possible consolidated action against IP management and technology company CPA Global for allegedly breaching standard service contracts with what may be tens of thousands of clients through concealed markups.
Following the announcement of the investigation and potential litigation, CPA Global filed a WIPO domain name complaint against Kobre & Kim, alleging that the URL "cpaglobal-litigation.com" infringed upon CPA Global's trademark.
After a WIPO panel review, the tribunal, adopting our arguments, denied CPA Global's complaint, finding that it "was brought in bad faith" and "brought primarily to harass the domain-name holder," constituting "an abuse of the administrative proceeding." Additionally, the panel stated, "[i]n this case, the Complainant ought to have known its Complaint was doomed to fail."
The WIPO decision sets an important precedent within the intellectual property and domain name space, as websites related to class actions commonly use the disputed domain name’s format (for example, trumpuniversitylitigation.com, gmsecuritieslitigation.com and uberlawsuit.com).
Related media coverage:
- "CPA claim doomed to fail" (Commercial Dispute Resolution, 1/16/18)
- "CPA Global launched domain name fight to 'harass' law firm: WIPO panel" (World Intellectual Property Review, 1/11/18)
- "New Class Action Defense Tactic Gets Swatted Down as Bad Faith" (The Am Law Litigation Daily, 1/10/18)
- "Intellectual Property company guilty of reverse domain name hijacking" (Domain Name Wire, 1/8/18)