Party City Corporation v. Tiimports Ltd., 2013-12-17 CIRA 245 (Dec. 17, 2013)

Representing Party City in a Canadian domain name proceeding, Leason Ellis obtained a favorable decision to recover the domain names party-city.ca and partycitycanada.ca.  In their decision, the arbitrators found that the domain names were registered in bad faith because they were used to point to other websites operated by the registrant selling competing goods.  The registrant’s arguments that it was unaware of Party City and its Canadian trademark registration were deemed not credible under the circumstances.  Additionally, the registrant’s arguments that PARTY CITY was descriptive or generic was rejected outright in view of the Canadian trademark registration for the mark PARTY CITY.