Nat Cohen wins reverse domain name hijacking charge against spa for SHA.com

Spanish spa and wellness center brought UDRP in bad faith.

Nat Cohen’s Telepathy has successfully defended the domain name Sha.com from an attack by Albir Hills Resort, S.A., known as SHA Wellness Clinic.

The panel also determined that SHA Wellness Clinic was guilty of attempting reverse domain name hijacking.

I’ve got to say, this was a no brainer for the three person panel.

First, SHA’s attorney said the resort had been “operating in the market for 15 years”. But the evidence showed otherwise, at least for the SHA Wellness Clinic. In fact:

The Complainant states that, after the creation of the SHA Wellness Clinic, the Complainant noticed that the disputed domain name sha.com was already registered; the Complainant thus attempted to purchase it from the Respondent, but, since the Respondent had requested an “exaggerated offer”, the Complainant opted for filing this Complaint.

That’s a good way of admitting that the domain was registered before you were in business.

SHA’s lawyer even said that the company tried to negotiate for the domain name, but since the price of the domain was high it opted to file the dispute.

I also appreciate this line from SHA’s attorney:

“the fact that the [Respondent’s] use is not real produces an obstruction act for my client, because the obvious and logical owner of the domain name is the owner of SHA. That, and furthermore the fact that there are no trademarks “SHA” owned by the respondent, implies a decrease of the reputation of my client’s trademarks”.

The “obvious and logical owner”??

If you’re wondering why Telepathy gets hit with so many UDRPs for three letter .com domains, it’s because it owns more than 1,000 of them.

Hopefully attorneys for other companies thinking about stealing three letter .com domains from Telepathy will do some research and figure out they’re wasting their money.