In April 2018, the German-based Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG filed a complaint with WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) regarding the domains lídl.eu and lìdl.eu and demanded the respective transfer.
Both domains are so-called IDNs (internationalized domain names), for which international characters are allowed in addition to numbers and characters from the Latin alphabet, in contrast to the usual domain names. In this case, the "i" from the name "Lidl" was replaced by an i with an engraving or acute. These letters occur in Old Norse, Icelandic, Faroese, Czech or Scottish Gaelic. Both domains were registered on 04/18/2018 and 04/17/2018 and will not be used in connection with an active website after notification of the complaint and will be resolved as an error page. The domain owner is the same in both cases and a private person from Romania.
The complainant is a food discounter from Germany, which is now represented in 28 countries with over 10,000 shops in Europe and the USA. She owns various trademark rights "Lidl" in Germany and Europe and has domains with different country endings such as lidl.de, lidl.com or lidl.es and many others in her portfolio.
Before the complaint was filed, the contentious domain names were used to redirect visitors to other websites such as dating portals, fraudulent mobile phone raffles or vouchers.
The complainant states that the disputed domain names are identical or deceptively similar to her registered trademarks, that the defendant has no rights or legitimate interest in using these domain names and that the domain names are used maliciously.
The defendant did not respond to the request from WIPO and did not take a position. In doing so, he forfeits the chance to prove that he has a legitimate interest in the domain name. WIPO can only consider this as so-called prima facie evidence of a lack of rights or legitimate interest. Finally, WIPO evaluated the complaint in favour of the complainant and decided that the two contentious domain names should be transferred to the complainant. The full decision on the complaint (DEU2018-0011) can be found on the WIPO website.
A check on 07/23/2018 showed that the two domains had not yet been transferred. However, they are at least already in a status from the registry that indicates a legal check and therefore does not allow active use or a transfer to an uninvolved party.
In order to avoid that these domains are registered by other persons in the future, the transfer into the domain portfolio of Lidl is necessary. The costs of early registration by Lidl would have been significantly lower than those for the appeal procedure. However, for a realistic estimate, the registration and renewal fees must be compared with those of many domains with different spellings. We therefore recommend every company a clearly defined domain policy and an annual review of the domain portfolio in order to avoid such disputes.