Panelist lets complainant off the hook for filing dead-on-arrival UDRP.
A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has found in favor of the owner of Maaji.com in a UDRP case, but for some strange reason did not find the complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.
The case falls in line with previous reverse domain name hijacking decisions. The domain name owner registered the domain name in 2001. The earliest the complainant claims use of the term Maaji in commerce was 2007. How could the domain owner have registered the domain name in bad faith?
Yet, panelist Stephanie G. Hartung let complainant MAS S.A.S. off the hook:
Thereafter, the Panel is not persuaded that the circumstances of this case justify the finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. Apparently, there is no hard evidence that Complainant was ill motivated in lodging the Complaint. In the circumstances of this case, the mere fact that Complainant waited seven years from the registering of its MAAJI trademarks until the filing of this Complaint alone does not necessarily demonstrate that Complainant attempted to deprive Respondent of the disputed domain name. Moreover, in fact it remains unanswered up until now as to why Respondent ever registered the disputed domain name as it still rests in the dark what motivation Respondent had in the acquisition of the disputed domain name apart from – to put it in the Respondent’s own words – “its attraction as a dictionary word or common term”. Accordingly, this case was not so hopeless that it should not have been brought before a UDRP panel for a decision.
That’s a bad rationale for not finding reverse domain name hijacking.
macaedha says
‘Curiouser and curiouser cried Alice;
Steve says
The arbi “traitor” is an idiot. imho
C. S. Watch says
Of all the panelists available to the WIPO, why is a WIPO case manager assigning this dispute to a German lawyer, when both In Rem and In Personam jurisdiction is the USA?
And why didn’t this lawyer politely decline to accept the case, since she doesn’t have a US law degree? A one-year-abroad LLM isn’t enough. QED.
Being forced to spend $5,000.00 USD on a response doesn’t merit Ms. Hartung’s concern? Then you pay that $5,000.00, Stephanie. Got kids in school? Got house payments? Too bad. Some opportunistic lawyer wanted to kick the tires to see if you, Stephanie, could bleed $5,000. And now we regret it’s going to cost you $5,000.00 to get an attorney and file a response to this scheming, abusive garbage.
‘Shall’ find RDNH is the mandate of the Policy, and your duty…unless you’re paying the $5,000, or filing the response.
However, no one’s going to hire you to file the response, since, miraculously, you don’t understand that this domain is an inherently valuable asset to new companies.
500 million people on this planet speak Hindi. Wake up.
‘Mother’ in Hindi is about as dictionary and generic as words get. Even the transliteration to English in this one spelling appears six million times in Google. There are ten Maaji companies in the WIPO trademark database—none of them are in India.
‘I’m not paying for your domain name. I’m going to make this my company name so I can just take it.’ That archaic theft attempt is a violation of US federal law with a $100,000.+ penalty that attaches upon the UDRP filing. And it’s the WIPO’s job to make this more clear, not less clear. For the benefit of both parties.
Steve says
BRAVO!!!!!