Company filed UDRP against domain name registered over a decade before it claims rights to the brand.
Insight Energy Ventures, the company that offers home energy management systems at Powerley.com, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name Powerly.com (without an ‘e’). This is despite the owner of Powerly.com not responding to the cybersquatting complaint.
The domain name owner registered the domain name in 2004 and Powerley appears to have just started as a brand in 2015.
Even though the domain owner didn’t respond (and thus, did not ask for a finding of reverse domain name hijacking), the panel said “If abuse is apparent on the face of the case papers, the Panel is under an obligation to declare it.”
And indeed, it appears to be an abusive filing. Panelist John Swinson wrote:
In this case the Complainant made no attempt to prove the existence of any trade mark rights prior to 2015, yet asserted without any supporting evidence that the Disputed Domain Name was registered in bad faith. The Complainant asserted use in bad faith, but made no proper attempt to justify that assertion. There is nothing in the evidence to suggest that the Respondent has been targeting the Complainant or its trade marks. The Complaint had no prospect of success on the facts set out in the Complaint, and the Complainant or those advising it must have been aware of that fact.
It appears to the Panel that the Complainant wishes to operate under the brand “Powerly”, as opposed to “Powerley”, and filed this Complaint in an attempt to obtain the corresponding domain name. This is an abusive use of the Policy.
C. S. Watch says
Domain hijacking is a cut-and-dried violation of crystal-clear federal law, so one invariably finds that complainants like this are blasé lawbreakers already. Panelists deciding these abusive filings can save time for themselves by watching out for complainants who are ‘rebranding.’ Rebranding is what errant companies must do, in order to sidestep past lawsuits, criminal charges, and pesky bad press.
This is the case with the ‘Powerley’ dispute:
Powerley is a subsidiary brand, and ‘app face,’ of DTE Energy of Detroit. DTE is one of the nation’s filthiest polluters—a coal-power dinosaur which spent $4.37 million on lobbying to avoid clean-ups and crucial upgrades. [PublicCampaign.org].
Each year, just two of their 22 coal plants blast out sulfur dioxide ‘the weight, in pollution, of a moderately sized cruise ship.’ [Newsweek]. Read this 2014 expose on DTE Energy/Powerley to get a bead on one of America’s most ruthless and destructive companies. http://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/08/michigan-air-pollution-poison-southwest-detroit-441914.html.
DTE Energy/Powerley operates like a deathtrap nightmare from the 1920s. (And the Newsweek article coverage of DTE’s exploitation of black communities, so they can pollute with impunity, is just flat jaw-dropping.)
Drewbert says
Nice to see panelists doing their job rather than rubberstamping.