Company wanted to get the .com to match its .com.mx domain name.
A Mexican advertising company has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in its attempt to get the domain name CentralMedia.com.
Central Media S.C., which uses the country code domain name CentralMedia.com.mx, filed a cybersquatting complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization.
The current owner of the domain name lives in Australia and registered the domain name in 1999. Not only was this before Central Media S.C. claims any sort of trademark rights in the term Central Media, but the domain owner even used the domain name for a period of time.
Laughably, Central Media argued that future use by the domain name owner could be an attempt to cause confusion.
Panelist Adam Taylor ruled that the domain name wasn’t registered and used in bad faith. Regarding reverse domain name hijacking, Taylor wrote:
The Panel considers that the Complainant has been guilty of RDNH because its case has failed by a large margin. In the Panel’s opinion, the Complainant knew or at least should have known that it could not prove one of the essential UDRP elements. The Complainant’s representatives quoted extensively from UDRP case law and the Panel thinks it unlikely that they were unaware of the current overwhelming view of UDRP panelists as to the need to prove registration as well as use in bad faith.
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