Another reverse domain hijacking finding against DePenning & DePenning

Law firm is behind another reverse domain name hijacking case.

DePenning & DePenning, a law firm in India, has filed another UDRP that was found to be reverse domain name hijacking.

Previous reverse domain name hijacking findings against the firm’s cases include bosch.net and CEATE.com. In the latter case, the panel found that the Complaint included manufactured evidence.

The latest case was filed by silk retailer and manufacturer Nalli Chinnasami Chetty against the domain name NalliGroup.com. The panel determined that the case was filed in bad faith despite the domain owner not responding.

Canadian television producer Anthony Nalli, host of The Aviators, owns the domain name. Once the registrar verification was concluded after the original UDRP was filed, the domain owner’s information was made available to Nalli Chinnasami Chetty and DePenning & DePenning. At this point, it was clear that the domain owner had a legitimate interest in the domain and did not register it in bad faith. But the Complainant went ahead without changing its argument.

Panelist David Bernstein thus found the Complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. He wrote:

The conduct in this case falls under the category of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. Once the privacy shield was lifted through the Registrar Verification, the Complainant and its counsel knew that they could not possibly succeed on any fair interpretation of the facts in this case. By filing an amended Complaint and repeating the same arguments that were in the initial Complaint, the Complainant and its counsel abused the WIPO administrative process in an attempt to obtain the disputed domain despite the inconvenient fact that the Respondent was Mr. Nalli. Rather than address that point, the Complainant and its counsel simply repeated the same arguments, baldly asserting that Mr. Nalli could have no plausible reason for registering the disputed domain name other than to usurp the Complainant’s goodwill. The Complaint was therefore completely devoid of any facts or arguments that could support a finding that the Respondent lacked rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name.

The Complainant and its counsel also provided no evidentiary support whatsoever to support their argument that the Respondent must have registered and used the disputed domain name in bad faith. As such, they completely ignored the requirements set out in the Policy for establishing bad faith registration and use of a domain name..