Company files UDRP after failing to buy domain for two decades.
A UDRP panel has found Work In Progress Creative Solutions Ltd, aka WIP Systems, guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.
The company, which offers a workflow platform, started using the domain name wipsystems.co.uk in 2007 and wipsystems.com.au in 2018. It coveted wipsystems.com and filed a UDRP cybersquatting complaint to try to get the domain.
A Washington state man registered wipsystems.com in 2000, and the Complainant has been trying to buy it from him for about 20 years.
While the Complainant said it has been using its claimed “WIP Systems” name “for over twenty years”, it provided no proof of that.
Given the dates, panelist Terry Peppard had no problem finding in the domain owner’s favor, and finding that WIP Systems filed the case in bad faith:
In order to justify a finding of RDNH, we must be persuaded both that the Complaint has no merit and that Complainant has proceeded under the UDRP in bad faith. On the record before us, the salient facts on this question include that:
1. the record demonstrates that Complainant filed its Complaint in this proceeding out of frustration over a lengthy effort to acquire the challenged domain name through a series of unsuccessful purchase negotiations;
2. when it filed its Complaint, Complainant must have known from available public records that Respondent had acquired its domain name before Complainant established, by registration or otherwise, rights in the mark upon which it relies; and
3. Complainant has offered no evidence showing that Respondent procured its domain name registration in bad faith anticipation of Complainant’s acquisition of rights in its claimed mark.
On these facts, we find both that the Complaint lacks merit, as detailed above, and that Complainant’s submissions show that, in filing and prosecuting this proceeding, it has attempted in bad faith to obtain a domain name which it has failed to prove is other than the rightful property of Respondent, as well as that its motivation in pursuing this proceeding was to obtain by abuse of the processes of the Policy what it could not obtain by commercial negotiation. As a result, Complainant has attempted to commit Reverse Domain Name Hijacking as defined in the Rules.
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