…or it certainly should have been withdrawn later.
Last week, National Arbitration Forum published a decision for the domain openbots.com in favor of the domain owner. I think this case should have never been filed and, giving the most favorable read to the Complainant, should undoubtedly have been withdrawn after the response was received.
OpenBots, Inc., which uses openbots.ai, filed the dispute.
At the time it filed the dispute, openbots.com didn’t resolve. The Complainant said it tried to reach out to the owner about the domain but didn’t hear back. And like nearly all domains these days, the domain also had Whois privacy by default.
So the Complainant was probably frustrated in its attempt to acquire the domain.
However, OpenBots, Inc. is a relatively new company. The trademark it relies upon in its complaint states a first use in commerce date of 2020. Openbots.com was registered in 2003. So the company should have identified something to suggest that the domain has changed ownership since 2020.
Historical Whois records show that the domain has been at Namecheap under its Whois privacy since before that date, and its nameservers haven’t changed during that period. I can’t find anything in historical records to indicate a change.
I think a Complainant’s law firm should at least make an effort to review historical records before filing a case. Here, there’s nothing to suggest that the Complainant has rights predating the current owner’s registration of the domain, so the case was dead on arrival.
If you want to give the Complainant some leeway, it certainly should have withdrawn the case once the domain owner’s identity was revealed. As part of the post-GDPR UDRP process, National Arbitration Forum would have revealed this information to the Complainant and given it the opportunity to amend the case.
And if you want to give even more leeway, the company should have withdrawn when the Respondent confirmed his ownership dating to 2003.
It doesn’t appear that the Respondent asked for reverse domain name hijacking, but I think panelist Douglas Isenberg should have considered it.
And, should there be changes to UDRP in the future, I think the intake should ask the Complainant to clearly state if it claims rights predating the domain registration.
Really the UDRP is such a bad farce. As soon as I receive a UDRP I will be immediately in Court ,not waiting around.
Hey Team,
Is there an alternative to UniRegistry for category or keyword chosen ppc ads for parked domains?
For example, lets say I own – forsakn(com) (not the best example but close enough to my situation)
Forsakn is a dictionary word albeit mispelled. However, it can be argued to have value (my actual domain is a very common word with one missing letter and 5 chars)
Bodis might bring up ads for everything from “dog food” (hi John!) to web hosting etc
While these might not infringe on lets say Forsakn Car Parts per se that has trademark rights since for example 2020, and therefore not place my site in competition with ForsaknCarParts(com) I would rather have ads that align themselves as close as possible to the dictionary definition for ‘Forsaken’ – if at all possible
Basically I have a nice 5 char common word missing 1 letter but pronounced identical to the full dictionary word that I want to hang on to. Other folks have later caught on… with everything from a gym, coffee brand, seo etc using my mispelling as the prefix. I know my registration predates any trademarks by a good margin but want to protect myself as much as possible.
Construction or “Coming Soon” pages are out.. should I just stick with bodis and its wide array of “non competing” but irrelevant ads and in the event of a UDRP hope I get a reasonable 3 panel (this domain I believe is worth the extra $750)
Thank you!