Eco Spat: Live Earth Charged with Reverse Domain Name Hijacking
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Environmental awareness company busted for “glaring example” of reverse domain name hijacking.
A for profit eco awareness and fundraising company that associates itself with Al Gore has lost a domain name dispute and been charged with reverse domain name hijacking.
Live Earth, LLC, which organizes concerts, runs, and other events to raise money and awareness for environmental issues, filed an arbitration case with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name LiveEarth.com. The company uses LiveEarth.org as its main web site.
But the company had no chance of winning. LiveEarth.com was registered in 1998, almost a decade before Live Earth, LLC started operating. The registrant of the .com also had clear rights or legitimate interests in the name, since he was part of a group called Live Earth Trust.
Live Earth, LLC attempted to purchase the domain name and offered $50,000, which the domain owner refused. Hence the arbitration filing.
In finding that Live Earth, LLC committed a “glaring example” of reverse domain name hijacking, the arbitration panel wrote:
In this case, evidence of Complainant’s bad faith use of the Policy abounds. With the benefit of counsel, Complainant initiated this proceeding based upon a common law claim to trademark rights that is tenuous at best. Moreover, Complainant’s filings have ignored the applicability of Policy paragraph 4(c)(ii), which makes it painfully obvious that Respondent has rights and legitimate interests in the disputed domain name by virtue of Respondent’s founding and operation of an organization with almost exactly the same name. Also, those filings have completely disregarded the fact that registration of the disputed domain name predated any claim to Complainant’s ownership of said trademark rights by about nine years, which makes it even more painfully obvious that the disputed domain name was not registered in bad faith relative to Complainant.
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Tags: National Arbitration Forum, udrp
One would think that a company that hopes to manage a domain registry would know the UDRP rules before filing a claim like this. Glad the respondent got a reverse hijacking ruling. Would be nice to see them go after the complainant in the legal system to recover all costs of this defense. Abusing the system should not be tolerated.
Elliot – is Live Earth associated with dot eco?
Is there a punishment for reverse domain hijacking? Or is it just bad press?
jorge – bad press, and it can be used against you in future UDRP cases.
Just a bad press? this is not enough punishment for domain hijacking. They should pay all the money spent to defend the domain.
It seems inherently wrong that a company can switch to a UDRP when they have already made an unsolicited cash offer. They contact you and offer money for a domain they’d like to have, but when a price cannot be agreed upon they then try to rape and pillage via UDRP.
I think evidence of a prior offer should be grounds for invalidating or dismissing a UDRP. The UDRP is way too easy to abuse, and there is no threshold for UDRP eligibility. All the fringe players (WIPO, NAF, panelists) get a cut of money … so no one has an interest in correcting the abuses.
“I think evidence of a prior offer should be grounds for invalidating or dismissing a UDRP.”
That’s a great idea, MM.
But let’s not all hold our collective breaths waiting for it to happen…
…otherwise there’d be a lot of dead domainers lying around everywhere.
ps That clapping you hear is from the other 99.99 percent of the world who aren’t domainers.
>> It seems inherently wrong that a company can switch to a UDRP when they have already made an unsolicited cash offer.
Agreed.
The whole thing stinks…