Appeal panel upholds reverse domain name hijacking finding against PNC Bank

Three-member panel agrees bank had no reasonable basis for bringing the case.

A panel has affirmed a decision denying PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.’s cybersquatting complaint against pnc.co.uk and pnc.uk. It has also affirmed that the bank’s case was reverse domain name hijacking.

PNC, a large bank, filed the original dispute under the Nominet Dispute Resolution Service in July this year. It alleged that Gordon Tees was cybersquatting with his registration of the domains.

Tees said that he has offered IT services under the initialism PNC since 1992. This was initially as a co-founder of a firm called Premier Networks Consulting Limited. He later sold his interest in that company, but created a new IT services business using the same initials as Pretty Nice Chaps Limited.

PNC (the bank) did not register any UK company until 2010, nor obtain any UK trade mark registration until 2021.

The bank first tried to buy the domains and filed the dispute after failing to get a response.

Under the policy, a Complainant can show that a domain was registered OR used in bad faith. It’s quite clear it wasn’t registered in bad faith, given how the domain was used in its early years. (PNC.uk was later registered when .uk was opened at the second level; a priority was given to registrants of third level domains under .uk.)

The original panel found that the domain wasn’t used in bad faith. The panelist found reverse domain name hijacking, writing:

Here, having clearly made extensive investigations into the Respondent’s business history, the Complainant should have appreciated that the Respondent had at all material times operated genuine and substantial businesses under names corresponding with the initials PNC, and that there were no sensible grounds for asserting that the registration, or subsequent use, of the Domain Names were designed to take unfair advantage of the Complainant’s trade mark rights.

The bank appealed, and a three-member panel affirmed the original decision this month. The appeal panel also agreed with the original panel that this was a case of reverse domain name hijacking.

The full appeal decision is available here (pdf).