flora noun The plants of a particular area, type of environment or period of time So how the hell!? This decision makes no sense to me Findings CASE NO. D00022794
DRS "experts" are supposed to be independent It seems to me Sallie Spilsbury has been stuffing her face full of margarine until it blurred her vision. I wasn't even aware of the "Flora spreadables" until today. I don't eat fucking margarine. Disgusting product and equally disgusting DRS decision. I hope the owner appeals and wins
The drs “expert” has come to that conclusion based on supposition. There are not enough facts to clearly prove an abusive registration. The “expert” is paid to come to a conclusion based on the written evidence supplied by both complainant and registrant and not on their own hypothesis.
Extraordinary reasoning from the 'expert'. I hope the owner mounts a robust appeal so this ludicrous decision can be reversed.
Does not make any sense. Flora is a generic. It's OK to use this name as long as you are not using the domain to sell spreadable margarine! An Abusive Registration - What a weird and wrong decision to make!
Hard to understand the 'expert's' reasoning on this one. Firstly, as others have said, the term flora and its generic meaning refers to flowers sector - loads of companies use the term flora in their company name at Companies House Flora.co.uk was registered in 1997 - some 14 years before flora.com appears to have been used for the first time by Flora spreads. The flora.com domain appears to have been sold on 1st Nov 2011 for $95,000 and archive.org then show the domain being used for Flora spreads in an archive page dated June 15th 2012. But before this archive.org provides many screenshots of previous home pages, showing the domain was being used to derive ppc income from...guess what...flowers! https://web.archive.org/web/20010701131102/http://flora.com/ 2001 https://web.archive.org/web/20110304202816/http://flora.com/ 2011 (also a for sale button on page)
Maybe a DRS decision should be overlooked by several "experts" In which all would have to agree. This would stop any rouge judgements being enforced by any single "expert" I hope he counters. It wont be too hard to get this one back.
The whois shows that the domains haven't been transferred away from owner yet. Hopefully that means an appeal has been submitted. Let's all hope so. As you say with a number of experts looking at this we should see a different result!
The word FLORA is trademarked by quite a few different companies, so I don't see why the disgusting spreadable should get special treatment. The term is introduced by the complainant which makes me believe this is an amateur claim made by some director's secretary. The fact that it is used again by the "expert" suggest she too might be equally amateur.
Really shocked by this. Very poor decision that could be used as precedence for future poor decisions. Hopefully it will be reversed.
Neither we [Nominet] nor our directors, officers, employees or servants nor any Expert shall be liable to a Party for anything done or omitted in connection with any proceedings under the DRS unless the act or omission is shown to have been in bad faith. 9.1 You agree to be bound by the DRS policy.
Especially since in previous decisions it has been made very clear that 'domain stockpiling' for selling is a legitimate business and means nothing if not violating trademarks. Another nominet 'expert' paid for sweet fanny adams. It's a shame public benefit is stopping at the board and only then to get them removed from it - they'll still have jobs at exorbitant salaries in an industry they know nothing about. Out of the 200 employees there I can only think of a handful that are worth keeping.
Let's suppose, hypothetically of course, that the expert was paid off by a huge corporation. But of course, that kind of stuff doesn't happen, does it.
Anyone remember the previous rogue DRS "EXPERT" that was let loose on members of the industry D00022003 - ovs.co.uk - later overturned. In my opinion, if someone wins the appeal, they should immediately receive a reimbursement of the 3k fee that is needed to appeal. It's Nominet's Agent's error and should be covered by Nominet.
And add something like three strikes and you're out policy for "experts" where if their decisions are repeatedly overturned in the appeals then they probably should find a different job I would really like to hear from anyone that can bring any arguments that this decision is fair, maybe from someone with more experience in these things. We all here are 'domainers' so we might be impartial I suppose, so would love to hear any counterarguments.
