Ad firm N2COM guilty of reverse domain name hijacking

Company tried to get BabyBoom.com through cybersquatting claim after failing to buy it.

Would you believe the domain name BabyBoom.com is a case of cybersquatting?

Neither would just about anyone else, but that’s what advertising firm N2COM tried to argue in a UDRP it filed this summer.

The firm has a brand called BabyBoom that targets…wait for it…baby and parenting stuff.

Back in 2007 it sent a cease & desist letter to domain investor Xedoc, which acquired the domain in 2003. Xedoc rebutted the letter and didn’t hear back again until 2012 when N2COM tried to buy the domain. N2COM’s biggest offer came in 2015…just $5,000.

Fast forward to 2017 when it filed a cybersquatting complaint. It’s a typical “Plan B” UDRP. Or should I say Plan C?

Unsurprisingly, the three person World Intellectual Property Organization panel found N2COM to have filed the case in abuse of the policy:

The Complainant in this case is legally represented and, in the view of the Panel, should have been aware in the circumstances set out above that this Complaint was misconceived. The Panel also notes that in February 2007 the Respondent’s representatives sent a detailed letter of rebuttal to the Complainant’s “cease and desist” letter, which stated at the end: “If we do not hear from you within the next 10 days we will consider this matter closed.” The Panel accepts the Respondent’s evidence that it did not hear from the Complainant again until the Complainant sought to purchase of the disputed domain name in 2012 and that the Complainant did not make further allegations of infringement at that time. This proceeding having been commenced a few months after those negotiations were unsuccessfully concluded, the Panel finds on balance that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative process.

The complainant was represented by Laetitia Domb. Xedoc was represented by Paul Keating.