Please hire a lawyer familiar with UDRP.
If you think someone is cybersquatting on your brand, please hire a competent lawyer familiar with UDRP to evaluate and file your dispute.
For the second day in a row, a Complainant has failed to make arguments for the second two prongs of UDRP: rights or legitimate interests and registration and use in bad faith.
Yesterday, I wrote about a reverse domain name hijacking decision for zerocoder.com where the Complaint didn’t address these two elements, which must be shown to win a case. The panel found reverse domain name hijacking.
Today, it’s Scentsational Shoppe, Inc.’s turn. It filed a complaint against perfume-oils.com. It similarly lost on all three elements, and for the last two, it didn’t make any arguments other than reciting the text (for the last element, it merely wrote, “The domain name has been registered and used in bad faith” with no supporting evidence).
In finding reverse domain name hijacking, panelist Lawrence Nodine wrote (pdf):
Complainant is represented by counsel, who knew or should have known it could not succeed as to any of the required three elements of the Policy.
Complainant must have been aware that its trademark rights were severely limited, but made no offer of evidence of its use of the Mark and or any evidence regarding secondary meaning.
Complainant made no effort to explain why Respondent’s website did not evidence a bona fide online business. Complainant similarly made no effort to support its allegations of bad faith.
Complainant clearly ought to have known it could not succeed under any fair interpretation of facts reasonably available prior to the filing of the complaint, including relevant facts on the website at the Domain Name.
The Panel finds RDNH.
The Vanel Law Firm, P.C. represented the Complainant. This is the second reverse domain name hijacking involving Vanel Law this month. The firm is run by Clyde Vanel, a New York Assemblyman. Hollander Law, P.C. represented the domain owner.
MikeUK says
I quote from your article “please hire a competent lawyer”.
Therein lies “The” Problem. How do you know if a Lawyer IS competent ?. All lawyers hold themselves out as Competent , but only a very small percentage ARE competent.
Andrew Allemann says
Find someone who has handled (and won) previous disputes under the policy, and see their work
John Berryhill says
This was Vanel’s second RDNH this month, incidentally. He also happens to be a New York state assemblyman.