RB.net Domain Owner Can Keep Domain Name
Friday, May 29th, 2009
Arbitration panel finds no bad faith, but declines to find reverse domain name hijacking.
A Korean man has successfully defended against a domain arbitration claim waged by United Kingdom pharmaceutical company Reckitt Benckiser Plc for the domain name RB.net.
Reckitt Benckiser claimed to have common law rights to the term ‘RB’. It claimed that the domain name was a parking page until 2006 showing unrelated pay-per-click links, and since then has not resolved. The arbitration panel summarized this claim:
“The Respondent is rather using the disputed domain name misleadingly to divert consumers or to tarnish the RB Mark. Indeed, the fact that the disputed domain name currently resolves to an inactive webpage is supposed to indicate the Respondent’s desire to block such name from registration by the Complainant.”
This is an interesting assertion, as a domain name that doesn’t resolve likely doesn’t tarnish a trademark.
The panel decided that the domain name wasn’t registered and used in bad faith, citing many reasons including:
-It’s unlikely the registrant in Korea had heard of the company when he registered the domain. The company was created in 1999 as a result of a merger.
-RB, like most acronyms, has many possible uses and doesn’t necessarily refer to the complainant.
However, the panel declined to find reverse domain name hijacking, writing “In the present case, where the Complainant owns if limited common law trade mark rights identical to the second level domain name, there is no room for a reverse domain name hijacking order.”
RB.com is owned and used by Robert Bentley, Inc.
Further Reading:
- Minnesota Company Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking
- Ace.com Owner Wins Arbitration
- Arbitrator Says Complainant Harassed Domain Owner
Tags: Reckitt Benckiser Plc, udrp
Arbitration panel finds in favor of RB.net but denies reverse domain name hijacking http://bit.ly/dlLKr
RB.net Domain Owner Can Keep Domain Name – http://tinyurl.com/mgnq4p