WIPO Orders Transfer of XPole.com

WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) ordered the owener of Xpole.com to give up the domain name (that today redirects to DancePoleKit.com) to give up to domain to Vertical Leisures, owners of the trademark for Xpole.

Vertical Leisure has manufactured, marketed and distributed a dance pole kit called XPole since 2004, generating revenue in excess of $1.8 million by the beginning of 2010.

"[WIPO] finds that this offer constitutes a circumstance indicating that [Cho] registered or acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to [Vertical Leisure] or to a competitor ..., the mediators said. "In the panel’s view, this behavior evidences bad faith."

"The answer is that it is," mediators said. "The domain name consists, first of all, of the entirety of the trademark. The domain name is identical to complainant’s XPole trademark when the .com TLD is discounted."