Hydro-Québec, the public company responsible for electricity in Quebec, obtained the transfer of the domain name <xn--hydroqubec-h7a.com> (hydroquébec.com) (NAF, FA2011001921549, Hydro-Québec v. Tomasz Kurlenko, December 23, 2020). The claimant had no difficulty in proving that this was a case of cybersquatting.
The “hydroquebec.com” case recalls the importance that there may be in registering and using internationalized domain names, in particular when the trademark contains non-ASCII characters, as in the present case. Indeed, Hydro-Québec owns the “Hydro-Québec” brand and uses hydroquebec.com to designate its institutional site. Getting control over hydroquébec.com was therefore essential, for three reasons: legal, commercial, and cultural.
