Company with a history of cybersquatting claims is found to have filed a case in abuse of the UDRP.
BidPal, Inc., a company that helps charities raise money under the name OneCause, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name OneCause.org. The company has a history with UDRP and cybersquatting challenges.
The company lost a UDRP it filed in 2012 to get the domain name BidPal.com. It then hired a new layer and filed a federal lawsuit in 2014 in another effort to get the domain. That suit was settled and BidPal got the domain name.
Then, late last year the company filed a UDRP to get the domain name OneCause.com. The case was withdrawn and it appears the parties settled as BidPal now uses OneCause.com.
This year it filed a UDRP against OneCause.org, and it was for this case that the company was found to have filed the case in abuse of the policy.
The current domain owner registered the domain in 1999. BidPal didn’t file for a trademark until this year. It also inquired about buying the domain first. In other words, it was a classic Plan B reverse domain name hijacking case.
Panelist Fernando Triana wrote:
In the present case, the disputed domain name was registered in 1999, for Respondent to express to storage his documents, use the email service and maintain a blog, which was described to be his “one cause”.
Complainant registered its trademark in 2018 before the USPTO, and before the first use of the trademark, Complainant offered Respondent to buy the disputed domain name, thus, demonstrating knowledge of the previous existence of the disputed domain name.
Furthermore, Complainant failed to file any evidence concerning lack of rights or legitimate interest and bad faith.
Moreover, Complainant tried to confuse the Panel regarding Respondent’s bad faith, as the Complaint asserted that Respondent is profiting from Complainant’s reputation, which is not evidenced and probably nonexistent as the trademark ONECAUSE was recently registered.
This makes me wonder what the circumstances of the OneCause.com case were and what the settlement was.
Anon says
It looks like amateur hour over at Overhauser Law Offices, LLC. Remind me to never hire Paul Overhauser as my IP attorney. Did he not even read the basic requirements to file a UDRP??