Dunkin’ Brands, through two intellectual property holding companies, has filed for arbitration to get United Arab Emirates .ae domain names related to two of its brands.
The two separate cases were filed with World Intellectual Property Organization. In the first case, the company filed for two domains related to Dunkin’ Donuts: dunkin-donuts.ae and dunkindonuts.ae. The second case is for Baskin Robbins: baskin-robbins.ae and baskinrobbins.ae.
United Arab Emirates recently liberalized its registration rules. The domain names were probably registered after the registration rules changed.
Both Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins have stores in United Arab Emirates.
All of the domain names are registered to Ali Abdelwahed. Abdelwahed also received a domain arbitration filing for hardees.ae, filed by the popular fast food restaurant chain. Hardees is part of CKE Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE: CKR).
All the 4 domains are registered with IP Mirror, an aeDA accredited registrar. The whois record shows that today the aeDA has added a few restrictions on the domains in the global DNS, mainly the following:
# serverUpdateProhibited – under dispute
# serverTransferProhibited – under dispute
# serverDeleteProhibited – under dispute
# serverRenewProhibited – under dispute
These show that an action is currently being carried out. We will monitor and keep you posted on the process.
