Shipping company files an abusive UDRP to try to get .com matching its .cl domain.
A Chilean shipping, transport and logistics company has been found to have tried reverse domain name hijacking the domain name GEN.com.
Agencias Universales S.A. filed a cybersquatting dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization to get the domain. The Complainant uses the domain name GEN.cl for its website; it is now known as “Grupo de Empresas Navieras,” meaning “group of shipping companies” in Spanish.
The domain owner registered the domain name for use in a now-defunct business called Global Education Network.
While the Complainant says it wasn’t aware of this when it filed the case, panelist Adam Taylor noted that the case still “failed by a large margin”.
He wrote:
The Complainant should have appreciated the level of evidence necessary to prove under the UDRP that the Respondent registered the disputed domain name in bad faith. The disputed domain name had a creation date of April 25, 1996, and even if acquired later, it is composed of three letters that could easily correspond to an acronym or to a dictionary word, and is currently passively held. The Complainant should have considered if there really existed any evidence to prove that the disputed domain name was registered with the Complainant’s trade mark in mind in order to take advantage of the Complainant’s trade mark with bad faith rather than for a legitimate purpose…
…As regards the Respondent’s plainly legitimate use of the disputed domain name, the Complainant says that it knew nothing of Jeff Williams or his alleged connection with the Company at the time of filing the Complaint. But even allowing for this, and even if it was reasonable for the Complainant not to have discovered the Company’s connection with the disputed domain name from the Wayback Machine, the Complainant still failed to put forward a stateable case for bad faith, let alone any relevant supporting evidence…
…Instead, the Complainant came up with a number of contrived arguments which fell far short of constituting bad faith, including an assertion that, of itself, use of the name “GEN” by the Complainant’s group with its alleged worldwide presence reinforced the Complainant’s right to own the disputed domain name with its “important” .com suffix…
The Complainant was represented by Sáenz de Santa María Abogados. The domain owner was represented by Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.
LaughingBoy says
Hey Negari (https://Gen.xyz)…you’re next!
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!