14 DAY TRIAL // MasterCard International Incorporated of Purchase, also known simply as Master Card, filed at the end of May 2009 a complaint at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) against Jose Carlos Bisognin Panzenhagen from Porto Alegre, Brazil. After judging procedures, the WIPO Arbitration Center concluded that Mr. Bisognin used the 1mastercardonline.com domain name in bad faith, impersonating the MasterCard website to gain access to financial information for personal profit.
Jose Carlos Bisognin registered on April 8th, 2009 the above-mentioned domain name on the eNom registrar and redirected the domain to pages that contained a message in Portuguese that read, “Welcome to MasterCard Brazil.”
He was also accused by MasterCard of publicly using MasterCard registered trademarks to gain personal profit in various ways. Mr. Bisognin was employing a click-through ad campaign to obtain profits, displaying ads to MasterCard services and competitors alike. He was also acquiring personal information from page visitors by imitating the MasterCard complaint center's page design and asking for personal and financial details.
He also posted a list of related searches including “Online Bill Payment,” “Credit Card Payments,” “Payment Processing Solutions,” “Payment Processing Services,” “MasterCard Visa Merchant,” “Apply For Visa” and “Best Buy Visa.” When clicking the “MasterCard Visa Merchant,” visitors were being redirected to a PayPal bank and financial products page, displaying an offer that contained banking services with lower costs than the ones provided by MasterCard.
After analyzing all the details submitted in the MasterCard case, WIPO panelist Roberto Bianchi issued a ruling that ordered the domain name to be transferred into MasterCard's possession after Mr. Bisognin was found guilty of using the domain name in bad faith once he had registered it to confuse and trick Internet users.
No details were given by MasterCard about any kind of further legal actions to be taken against Jose Carlos Bisognin Panzenhagen in the near future.