The domain was registered well before the company was established.
A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panelist has determined that a financial data company filed a dispute against EagleData .com in bad faith.
Eagle Data, Inc. in the U.S., which uses EagleData .biz, filed the dispute. The subject domain is registered by Eagle Data Inc., in Singapore.
The Complainant appears to have filed a relatively weak complaint using WIPO’s online complaint filing form and model UDRP complaint.
The problem is that it was founded well after the domain name was registered and did not make any allegations that the domain has changed hands since then.
In finding reverse domain name hijacking, panelist Jeremy Speres noted that the model UDRP complaint states (in red text):
“[N.B., registration in bad faith is generally considered to be possible only when the domain name registration occurs after your trademark rights accrue, please refer to section 3.8 of the WIPO Overview 3.0.]”
Speres wrote (pdf):
The Complainant was therefore either made aware of the nature of the bad faith requirement and chose to file the Complaint anyway, knowing it could not succeed, or the Complainant recklessly filed the Complaint without properly considering the documents he relied upon for filing the Complaint. Both eventualities are reproachable.
The Complainant expressly acknowledged that the disputed domain name had been in the Respondent’s hands since at least 2003 in the Complaint, and thus knew that the disputed domain name was registered long before the Complainant acquired rights in its mark.
In the circumstances, the Complainant either knew or at least should have known at the time that it filed the Complaint that it could not prove one of the essential elements required by the Policy, specifically, it is very clear that the Respondent registered the disputed domain name many years before the Complainant came into existence and filed and registered its trademark.
The domain name owner didn’t respond to the dispute.
Is changing hands, let’s say acquiring an old name from an expired domain could justify taking the name from you ?
For example a name is registered in 2001 and expires in 2024 and you acquire it from the expired auction, if a company trademarked the term in 2021 for ex, is this means you will lose the name ?
That is ‘changing hands’. It doesn’t mean you’ll lose the UDRP, but it is one less thing to disqualify the case