WIPO D2000-0624 · decided 21 August 2000
Do The Hustle, LLC v. Tropic Web
The parties
- Complainant
- Do The Hustle, LLC
- Respondent
- Tropic Web
What did the panel find on each element?
| Policy paragraph | Finding |
|---|---|
| 4(a)(i) Identical or confusingly similar | Tropic Web admitted that pollyester.com and pollyesters.com are phonetically identical and confusingly similar to the POLLY ESTHER'S and POLLY ESTHERS marks, so the panel found the first element met. |
| 4(a)(ii) No rights or legitimate interests | The panel held that Tropic Web failed to produce concrete evidence for its claimed family nickname "Polly Ester" or its search engine plans, so it had no rights or legitimate interests. |
| 4(a)(iii) Registered and used in bad faith | The panel found no bad faith in Tropic Web's non-use, because the marks were weak homophones of the generic word polyester and Tropic Web had never offered the domains for sale. |
Why does Pollyester matter for a complaint today?
In Do The Hustle, LLC v. Tropic Web, D2000-0624, decided August 21, 2000, the panel found against Tropic Web on two elements and still denied the complaint. On the second element, the panel applied the rule now in section 2.1 of the WIPO Overview 3.1: once the complainant makes a prima facie case, the respondent has to come forward with evidence of its rights. The panel said that means concrete evidence, like documents or declarations. Tropic Web said "Polly Ester" was a family nickname but filed no declaration from the relatives it named. On bad faith, the issue was non-use. Tropic Web had built no website on either domain since registering them on November 28, 1999. Under Telstra v. Nuclear Marshmallows, D2000-0003, inaction can be bad faith, but the panel found it was not bad faith here. The marks sound like the generic word "polyester", and Tropic Web had never offered any domain for sale. For a business owner, an unused domain that matches a weak or descriptive mark is hard to recover under the UDRP. Section 3.3 of the WIPO Overview 3.1 says the more distinctive the mark, the less plausible a claimed good faith use.
What does the WIPO Overview 3.1 say?
The WIPO Overview 3.1 summarises how WIPO panels decide each issue. These sections cover the same point of law.
- Section 2.1: How do panels assess whether a respondent lacks rights or legitimate interests in a domain name? The Overview cites this decision here.
- Section 3.3: Can the "passive holding" of a domain name support a finding of bad faith? The Overview cites this decision here.
Who decided the case?
A single panelist, M. Scott Donahey, decided the case on 21 August 2000.
Read the decision
The full text is published by the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center. We summarise it here; the decision itself is the authority.
Summarised by Gergana Dimitrova. Checked against the published decision on 23 October 2026.
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