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On September 4, 2007, the domain name www.thetravelers.com was transferred from the account of a Cayman Islands-based "cybersquatter" to The Travelers Companies, Inc. and its affiliates. The registrar awarded Travelers the domain name, after Simpson Thacher prevailed in a World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) arbitration to recover the domain name on August 13, 2007. The WIPO respondent was an active, well-known cybersquatter who has registered multiple domain names that infringe the marks of prominent U.S. corporations, and operates websites under such trademarks to profit from the diverted website traffic. The respondent had registered thetravelers.com and used this domain to operate a commercial website that prominently displayed the trademarks TRAVELERS and ST. PAUL TRAVELERS and directed Internet users to third-party websites on a variety of topics, presumably to profit on a "pay per click" basis from user queries.

In its papers, Travelers asked the WIPO arbitrator to find that (i) Travelers had rights in the domain name www.thetravelers.com, based upon its longstanding ownership and use of the famous TRAVELERS brand, (ii) the respondent had no rights to this domain name, and (iii) the respondent had used and registered such domain name in bad faith. The WIPO arbitrator agreed with all of Travelers’ allegations and ordered the prompt transfer of the domain name to Travelers. The arbitrator found that Travelers had established strong rights to the TRAVELERS trademark based on “prominent and extensive” use of such mark for more than 100 years. He further found that the disputed domain name was registered and used in bad faith by the respondent, a “serial cybersquatter” who had “adopted the domain name deliberately to misleadingly attract users to its website for commercial gain.”  For the reported decision, D2007-0846 click here.

Lori E. Lesser, Mindy M. Lok and Elise C. Wolinsky represented Travelers in the proceeding.