Company files baseless cybersquatting claim after failing to buy domain name.
Compare Ninja Ltd., which operates the site ticket-compare.com, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking for the domain name TicketCompare.com.
The company filed a cybersquatting complaint against the domain name with World Intellectual Property Organization.
Ticketcompare.com was registered well before the company started using ticket-compare.com, which would explain its choice of a hyphenated domain name.
It first tried to buy the domain name but didn’t like the asking price. Over a year later it sent cease & desist letters to the domain owner. When the domain owner didn’t respond, it filed a UDRP.
Compare Ninja Ltd failed on all three elements required to win a UDRP.
In finding reverse domain name hijacking, the three-member World Intellectual Property Organization panel wrote:
The Complainant’s conduct follows the well-travelled route of a successive three-pronged attempt to gain control of a domain name, usually a “.com” domain name, upon which the relevant complainant simply has no possible claim.
Compare Ninja’s lawyer, Assaf Cohen Sidon, claims on his LinkedIn page to specialize in internet and intellectual property law.
Assaf Cohen Sidon only has 2 years of legal experience. Enough said.
I am not sure when this kind of UDRP is going to stop (complainant tries to buy a domain name, doesn’t want to pay the price asked, trademark the phrase, file for a UDRP.) We have been seeing this over and over again. Unless ICANN has a mechanism to not allow the filing for UDRP if the domain name was registered prior to the trademark, regardless of what the complainant comes up with, domain owners will be losers if they won the UDRP or not. Once the domain goes to UDRP, no one would want to buy it any longer. There should be a penalty assessed either on the lawyer or the complainant who filed this type of UDRP or the complainant.
One more time, from the top:
If they implement a penalty for rdnh, it doesn’t have to lead to the same for domain investors. Only the predator can be guilty of abuse of the process, not the respondent.