Attorney Zak Muscovitch helps eWeb Development win its seventh reverse domain name hijacking decision.
On Monday, I wrote about eWeb Development Inc. winning its sixth reverse domain name hijacking decision. It’s Friday, and now I’m writing about its seventh RDNH win.
As with the decision earlier this week, the case was dead on arrival.
Commercial real estate company Zember LLC filed the dispute despite admitting that the domain wasn’t registered in bad faith. Instead, it merely argued that it was used in bad faith. The domain was registered before the Complainant existed.
The Complainant attempted to purchase the domain name many times before filing the UDRP with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
A three-person WIPO panel ruled (pdf) that this was an attempted reverse domain name hijacking:
As explained above, given that the Complainant came into existence and registered its trademark many years after the Respondent registered the disputed domain name, there could not have been bad faith registration in bad faith by targeting the Complainant’s trademark. That means that the Complaint was doomed to failure, as the Respondent’s counsel pointed out twice in his correspondence with the Complainant. This issue is not close or subject to ambiguity: Both the Policy and the WIPO Overview 3.0 make it clear that bad faith can only be found if the Respondent acted in bad faith towards the Complainant and its trademark rights. Accordingly, the Panel finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an attempt at RDNH.
Zak Muscovitch represented eWeb Development in all seven of its reverse domain name hijacking wins.
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