Arena.com Owner Wins Domain Name Arbitration
Friday, February 6th, 2009
Panel finds Arena Swimwear’s arguments unconvincing.
Sometimes I see a domain name dispute and wonder what the heck the complainant was thinking. When I saw that the one word generic domain name Arena.com was in dispute, I scratched my head. First of all, I’d never heard of the complainant. Second, you better have some damning evidence against the respondent to go after a generic word such as Arena. When I see the domain name Arena.com, I think of sports arenas.
As it turns out, the complainant didn’t have good evidence of bad faith registration by the respondent. It was just another case of a company not wanting to pay fair market value for a domain name.
The complainant, Descente, Ltd. and Arena Distribution, S.A., offers a swimwear line called Arena. The respondent, Portsnportals Enterprises Limited, is a member company of the Hutchison Whampoa group of companies, which operates in a wide variety of commercial areas. The respondent used the Arena.com domain for a document management system earlier this decade but no longer uses the domain name.
For Arena Swimwear to have even a slight chance of winning, I’d expect Arena.com to currently be a parked page with ads for swimwear. But it’s not even in use. The idea that the respondent registered the domain name in bad faith to attract traffic looking for swimwear to its document management web site is laughable. The panel noted:
In this case, there is, in addition, a credibility gap to overcome. Why on earth would an industrial giant of the size of Hutchison Whampoa (or any part of it) wish to select a domain name with the express purpose of ‘selling’ its e-documentation handling services to people looking online for the Complainants’ swimwear? To the Panel, it seems a most unlikely scenario and the Complainants offer no explanation save for the attractive force that their brand engenders.
Apparently Arena approached the respondent about buying the domain name. The respondent said it might let it go for $200,000. Arena balked and filed the UDRP.
The respondent did not ask the panel to find reverse domain name hijacking.
You can read the entire decision here.
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First of all, this is just one more example of how desperate companies are getting.
GOOD, some are now starting “to get it”
Any mayor company trying to reverse hijack such a generic name needs to be punished.
After all that trouble and crap, Hutchison should double there price.
Also while still having control over the name?
Upload “ Sorry, we are out of Business” onto Arena.com
Another case of reverse domain name hijacking (even without the formal finding), and misusing the UDRP process as a cheap means of trying to steal a registrant’s legitimately registered domain.
I have written about this topic myself and am glad bloggers are ripping into these complainants. It’s about right and wrong, protecting legit domaining, and calling complainants out when exposed as greedy manipulators of the UDRP process.
They think big money and intimidation will pry domains away from simple domain registrants. And of course…it’s true.
However…it looks like some domain owners are standing up for their rights and finally winning quite often now.
Some complainants and their lawyers have been having to take some lumps with a marred record from losing. They deserve it quite often.
Happy about the ruling.200k is a drop in the bucket for someone like Descente.I just wonder what the result would have been if ARENA.COM had been owned by some small fry wildcatter…like me.
$200K was actually reasonable price. This happens when stupid companies listen to their lawyers.
[...] Arena.com Owner Wins Domain Name Arbitration Sometimes I see a domain name dispute and wonder what the heck the complainant was thinking. When I saw that the one word generic domain name Arena.com was in dispute, I scratched my head. First of all, I’d never heard of the complainant. Second, you better have some damning evidence against the respondent to go after a generic word such as Arena. When I see the domain name Arena.com, I think of sports arenas. As it turns out, the complainant didn’t have good evidence of bad faith registration by the respondent. It was just another case of a company not wanting to pay fair market value for a domain name. The complainant, Descente, Ltd. and Arena Distribution, S.A., offers a swimwear line called Arena. The respondent, Portsnportals Enterprises Limited, is a member company of the Hutchison Whampoa group of companies, which operates in a wide variety of commercial areas. The respondent used the Arena.com domain for a document management system earlier this decade but no longer uses the domain name. More… [...]
D quote -
“$200K was actually reasonable price.
This happens when stupid companies listen to their lawyers.”
Or, the advertising agency or sales manager, etc.
They should have asked an expert about its value. (maybe, they did??)
Now, they have a snowball chance in hell of ever buying it.
Monday quarterbacking, they should have had a broker act as the the buyer, they might have had a chance of buying and for less.
Worth mentioning the respondent isn’t some small fry, either.
I had the same problem with http://www.VitaminShoppe.com wanted me to give them http://www.VitaminShop.com they ended up buying it from me.
Must be nice not having to work for your money.