Kate Swoboda is a professional coach, with 10 years in the field of coaching, and training coaches.
She is also known by the moniker, “Kate Courageous.”
According to her bio:
“…the author of the Courageous Living Program and The Coaching Blueprint, founder of the Courageous Living Coach Certification, and creator of YourCourageousLife.com, where she’s helped thousands of people to access their courage and go from “I can’t,” to “Amazing!”
Kate’s web site, CourageousCoachingTraining.com, became the subject of a UDRP, after a company claimed rights to the COURAGEOUS LIVING mark.
Heart of Success, Inc. asserted that the registrant of CourageousCoachingTraining.com has no rights to the domain, and that it infringes on their mark.
National Arbitration Forum panelist, Natalia Stetsenko, examined the facts, despite the lack of response by the Respondent.
The Panel finds that Respondent selected the domain name for its website in good faith for the following reasons:
- The name is descriptive of its services (according to Respondent, “coaching training” refers to training people to actually become life coaches; and represents a different target consumer and different trade channel altogether),
- The fact that the domain name exactly matching the Complainant’s mark, which was available for purchase at the time Respondent acquired its domain name, was not chosen by Respondent serves yet another evidence that it aimed at profiting from generic value of the words based on their descriptiveness and not the reputation associated with the Complainant’s mark due to confusion with Complainant’s services,
- The case records do not show that Complainant promoted its services online before the registration date of the disputed domain name. Although Complainant argues that Respondent had at least constructive knowledge of the COURAGEOUS COACHING mark and Complainant’s rights in the mark when registering and using the disputed domain name, and therefore Policy 4(a)(iii) nonexclusive bad faith is present, panels often do not consider constructive notice as a valid argument under the Policy. […] Moreover, in the exchange of correspondence between the parties, Complainant recognizes itself that Respondent might have been unaware that it was using Complainant’s registered mark in its domain name.
The domain CourageousCoachingTraining.com was ordered to remain with the Respondent, Kate “Courageous” Swoboda.
For the full text of this UDRP decision, click here.
