Company tried to use UDRP to obtain domain that was registered in good faith.
A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has ruled (pdf) that a seller of cannabis products attempted to reverse hijack the domain name sipmamas .com.
A company called Mama Munchies LLC used the mark Mama’s to sell cannabis-infused drinks. Destination Liquid LLC said it acquired Mama’s trademark from one of its creditors when it went out of business. It said it obtained a court order for the transfer of the trademark and filed the UDRP to get control of the domain.
Unfortunately for Destination Liquid, UDRP is not a proper forum for obtaining a domain name in these circumstances. To win a UDRP, the domain must have been registered in bad faith. Clearly, when Mama Munchies registered the domain, it was not doing it in bad faith.
To get around this issue, Destination Liquid put forth the discredited “Octogen” theory of retroactive bad faith. Panelist W. Scott Blackmer noted:
Surely if the Complainant came to know of the Octogen case, it can be said to also have knowledge of the WIPO Overview section explaining that it is not good law.
Even though the domain registrant didn’t respond to the dispute, Blackmer found reverse domain name hijacking:
Despite the lack of a Response in this proceeding, the Panel finds that the Complaint has been brought in bad faith and constitutes an attempt at Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. The Complainant did not exist and had no trademark rights at the time the disputed domain name was registered. The Complainant relies on a theory of “retroactive bad faith” that has not been followed by Policy panels in the last decade, without advancing reasoned arguments for changing let alone challenging the consensus view on this issue.
Sanchez Fischer Levine LLP represented the Complainant.
crap domain name