The National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) is one of Australia’s leading not-for-profit organisations, raising money to fund research into the prevention and cure of breast cancer. Since its inception in 1994, NBCF’s activities have raised funds from the community to support multiple Australian-based research projects to the value of $97 million.

THE PROJECT

NBCF’s website (www.nbcf.org.au) and related social media are part of its key community engagement tools that it uses to promote its cause. The Foundation became aware of an unrelated party who had registered the domain name www.nbcf.com.au. This .com.au domain name was then resolving to a landing page which contained website links, from which the unrelated party was generating pay per click income. NBCF saw the need to recover the .com.au domain name and engaged Actuate IP to assist.

THE ACTION AND OUTCOME

Once a strategy was mapped out, Actuate IP utilised a domain name recovery process known as the Australian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (auDRP). Acting on NBCF’s behalf, a written complaint was prepared and filed through the auDRP outlining NBCF’s intellectual property rights to the www.nbcf.com.au domain name. The matter was soon successfully resolved with the unrelated party transferring the domain name to NBCF. The www.nbcf.com.au domain name now resolves to the NBCF website. As part of this strategy, Actuate IP also assisted NBCF, on a pro bono basis, with related Australian trademark filings through to registration.