This case was dead on arrival.
Hummingbird RegTech, Inc. has failed to get the domain name hummingbird.com through a cybersquatting claim.
The case was dead on arrival, and I’m a bit surprised that the panelist didn’t consider reverse domain name hijacking even though the domain owner didn’t respond.
Hummingbird RegTech, Inc. offers compliance systems for the financial industry and uses the domain name hummingbird.co. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised over $40 million in funding.
It makes sense that the company wants to upgrade to hummingbird.com. The problem is that the .com was registered in 1994. It was used by a company called Hummingbird that OpenText acquired in 2006. OpenText still owns the domain and forwards it to a page on opentext.com with tracking parameters to show that the referral was from hummingbird.com.
OpenText is a publicly traded company with a $3.5 billion market cap.
Hummingbird RegTech was founded in 2017, which means this case was dead on arrival. There was no way that the company could show the domain was registered and used in bad faith to target a then non-existent company.
OpenText did not respond to the dispute, but National Arbitration Forum panelist Nicholas J.T. Smith had no problem finding in its favor.
Rimon PC represented Hummingbird RegTech.
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