MagicPlan app maker is a reverse domain name hijacker

Company filed UDRP against domain registered well before it released its app.

The maker of MagicPlan, an app for creating floor plans, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking for its attempt to get the MagicPlan.com domain name.

App maker Technologies Sensopia Inc. filed a UDRP dispute even though it didn’t exist when the current owner of the domain registered it in 2004.

The app maker claimed that, although the registration didn’t initially target its app (since it didn’t exist), it originally was registered to target Disney and then switched to targeting the app later.

That’s not how UDRP works.

It also argued that renewals and a registrar transfer after the app maker started using the term in 2011 were done in bad faith.

Again, that’s now how UDRP works.

In finding reverse domain name hijacking, the three-person National Arbitration Forum panel wrote:

Complainant knew or should have known when it filed this case that it could not possibly prove bad faith registration, since Respondent registered the Domain Name seven years before Complainant began using its MAGICPLAN mark. It knew or should have known that its renewal/re-registration argument was universally discredited and would not be accepted by any Panel. It knew or should have known that it would have to prove both bad faith registration and bad faith use in order to prevail. Telstra Corporation Limited v. Nuclear Marshmallows, WIPO Case No. D 2000-0003. There is credible evidence that a person acting on behalf of Complainant attempted unsuccessfully to buy the Domain Name from Respondent in July 2016 (Declaration paragraph 13, Response, p. 2, Exhibit 4 to Response), and this action followed. For the foregoing reasons the Panel is convinced that Complainant filed this action in bad faith, perhaps as an alternative acquisition strategy, but in any event without any legal or factual basis for its claims. The Panel therefore finds Reverse Domain Name Hijacking and declares that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.

ESQwire represented the respondent.