The Complainant was the owner of the unregistered CANDYSTAND trade-mark. The Mark was used in association with providing a web site containing articles, puzzles, games and activities of an educational nature. The Registrant registered the domain name candystand.ca which resolved to page providing links to other websites. At some of the linked websites, candy was available for purchase by the Internet user.

Under the CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ("Policy"), a successful Complainant must establish that the disputed domain name is confusingly similar with a mark in which it had rights, that the name was registered in bad faith and that the Registrant does not have a legitimate interest in the domain name.

The Panel concluded that the Complainant's Mark was used in Canada as an unregistered trade-mark as per paragraph 3.2 of the Policy. In particular, the Panel found that it was a reasonable inference that of the very great numbers of individual users of the website candystand.com, at least a few were based in Canada.

On the issue of confusion, the Panel held that the Complainant had rights in the CANDYSTAND trade-mark due to the use of the Mark by the Complainant, and its predecessors in title, prior to the Registrant's registration. Accordingly, the Panel held that the candystand.ca domain name was confusingly similar as it was identical to the Complainant's Mark.

The Panel also held that the domain name was registered in bad faith. In particular, the Panel found that the Registrant had engaged in a pattern of domain name registrations that conflict with trade-marks owned by others as per paragraph 3.7(b). Additionally, the Panel found that the Registrant registered the disputed domain name with a purpose of denying the Complainant the opportunity to register the Mark as a dot-ca domain name.

Finally, the Panel held that the Registrant had no legitimate interest in the disputed domain name as per paragraph 3.6 of the Policy.