If you think something is fishy about the dates cited in the decision, you’re right.
I was reading through a UDRP decision (pdf) for snugg.com today when something caught my eye. The first two paragraphs of the “factual background” summary that the panelist puts together state:
According to the Complaint, the disputed domain name was registered on August 23, 2020, and updated on August 16, 2021.
On August 26, 2021, the Complainant was incorporated as a company under the laws of England and Wales. It is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. According to the Complaint, from about the date of its incorporation, the Complainant has been trading under the name “Snugg”.
First, anyone reading this summary knows the case is dead on arrival. The Complainant cannot show that the domain owner registered the domain in bad faith to target a Complainant that didn’t exist at the time of registration.
The other thing that nagged at me was the registration date. Snugg.com is an outstanding domain, and a 2020 registration date would be surprising. It could happen if the domain expired and went through the complete drop cycle, but that’s very rare.
The name sounded familiar, too. It turns out that this domain faced a UDRP back in 2012, too.
Looking at the Whois record, the registration date is clearly 1999, not 2020.
In both UDRP cases, the domain owner didn’t respond but won.
I’m unsure if World Intellectual Property Organization panelist Warwick Rothnie made a typo in the factual background section or if the Complainant, Arniston Ltd, stated it was registered in 2020. In this case, the dates still preceded any rights of the Complainant.
Jerrold Temko represented the Complainant.
Looks like auto-renew kicking in every August:
“Expires on 2023-09-14
Updated on 2022-08-15”
I’ve had a bunch of UDRPs where the Complainant simply asserts the “updated” date as the registration date. My guess is they see a date they like in the data, and go with it.
The Complainants here make the “updated date” argument, but it still doesn’t explain the 2020 registration date in the decision.
The bit quoted was just from the complainant’s filing, the actual panel decision say: “Even if the date of August 23, 2021, when the WhoIs record was last updated reflected the date of transfer to the Respondent (a conclusion for which there is no evidence), it was still three days before the incorporation of the Complainant.”, so Rothnie was saying that *even if* using the most recent date given by complainant it would still fail. The bigger question to me is why there was no RDNH finding here.