Poker site nailed for reverse domain name hijacking.
PokerStrategy.com operator Anachusa Ltd. has lost a UDRP for five clear typos of PokerStrategy.com. Not only that, but a three person panel also found the company guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.
So how does the owner of PokerStrategy.com lose a case for pokersrategy.com; pokerstategy.com; pokerstratgy.com; pokerstrtegy.com and pokrstrategy.com? It attempts to mislead the UDRP panel.
Anachusa Ltd. acquired the PokerStrategy.com domain name in 2006, well after the typos were registered. Until it was acquired the domain name was used for essentially the same purposes as the typo.
Anachusa Ltd. argued that the respondent must have registered the domain names in bad faith since PokerStrategy.com was registered in 2002. But the respondent had a trick up its sleeve — he hired domain attorney John Berryhill. Berryhill had actually represented the seller in the transaction where Anachusa acquired the domain. So he was well aware that the domain was acquired after the typos were registered.
Berryhill argued (in the panel’s words):
The point of this species of proceeding can only be the advice of counsel that, although there is no substantive merit to the claim, the speed with which the Policy operates and the variable degree of attention that a panelist may apply to the facts, renders it possible to catch a Respondent unawares and to essentially “sneak one by†with a definite probability of obtaining a domain name in circumstances where it is not warranted.
The panel agreed. In finding RDNH, it wrote:
…the Panel is satisfied that the Complainant’s representatives were well aware of the importance of the chronological issue – the Respondent’s attorney had alluded to it in pre-action correspondence and indeed the Complaint specifically referred to the question of whether the disputed domain names predated the trademarks.
Further, the Panel considers that the Complainant attempted to mislead the Panel on this point. The Complaint claims that the Respondent registered the disputed domain names “fully conscious†of the business it could generate from confusion with the Complainant as its own domain name pokerstrategy.com had “already†been registered in 2002. And, in the section “Identical or Confusingly Similarâ€, the Complainant states that the domain name was created in 2002 “and has been used sinceâ€. These statements were clearly designed to convey the impression that the Complainant itself had been using pokerstrategy.com for a website from 2002, before registration of the disputed domain names. Whereas the Complainant could hardly have been unaware of the fact that it had only acquired pokerstrategy.com in 2006.
The complainant won a previous case for pokerstrategy.co.
Stan says
What a joke really typos are typos there will always be infinite combinations of typos for all the domains out there. UDRP’s should only be for real cases typo cases seem like some elaborate hoax to benefit the domain lawyers only.