Web site’s attempt to get Clickz.co.uk rebuffed.
Popular online marketing web site ClickZ.com has lost an arbitration case to get the domain name ClickZ.co.uk.
Party Domain Limited registered Clickz.co.uk back in 1999. The domain points to a lander for the company that has links to some of it online party supply stores.
ClickZ publisher Incisive Financial Publishing Limited sent a letter to Party Domain Limited in November 2010 asking it to clarify its intentions in relation to the Domain Name.
Party Domain Limited responded that “Our registration predates yours by a couple of years and our intentions are of no concern to you.”
After ClickZ pressed the company further, Party Domain sent a feisty response (in part):
…Adam is a very busy manager in our e-commerce department. Your e-mails are an unwelcome intrusion and I want you to stop sending them.
Adam has given you a clear and succinct answer.
We are members of Nominet and very familiar with the DRS. We would welcome the opportunity to establish our rightful ownership of the clickz.co.uk domain so please go ahead with your proposed complaint. Please do not feel you have to wait until the 17th to do so. I am sure you are aware that you
will have to establish that our ownership constitutes an “abusive registration”.We will counter claim that in fact you are attempting a “reverse hijack” of our rightful ownership of clickz.co.uk…
So ClickZ did just that, filing a complaint.
In its complaint ClickZ cited the snarky responses as evidence of an abusive registration. The panelist disagreed:
Of course, while the Complainant is perfectly free to make enquiries of the Respondent in this respect, I do not regard the content of the Respondent’s correspondence at all exceptional given (a) that it is a “the first to file†system (b) the fact that the Respondent was unaware of the Complainant’s Clickz brand prior to receiving the letter of complaint and (c) the circumstances surrounding both the Respondent’s initial registration and subsequent use. In this regard, it is important to note that the Domain Name was registered in 1999 well before the filing date of the Clickz UK registered trademark. In my view the Respondent was perfectly entitled to respond as it did…
Although the panelist found in favor of Party Domain Limited, he did not find ClickZ guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.
Always worth a mention….
Note the tiny little seemingly innocuous word *or* just before “(b)”, in the first para below copied from the decision, and, again, directly after the semicolon in the second para, ie it does not say *and*.
“An Abusive Registration is defined in paragraph 1 of the Policy as a Domain Name which either (a) was registered or otherwise acquired in a manner which, at the time when the registration or acquisition took place, took unfair advantage of or was unfairly detrimental to the Complainant’s Rights; or (b) has been used in a manner which has taken unfair advantage of or has been unfairly detrimental to the Complainant’s Rights.”
“This means either that it was registered in a manner which took unfair advantage of or was unfairly detrimental to the Complainant’s Rights; or that the Domain Name has subsequently been used in a manner which has taken unfair advantage of or has been unfairly detrimental to the Complainant’s Rights”