Complainant tried to frame domain owner’s business as a sham.
A music creation platform tried to reverse hijack the domain name splice.ai, a UDRP panelist has ruled.
Distributed Creation, Inc., which operates the platform at splice.com, filed the dispute.
Despite plenty of evidence that splice.ai is used by a real business, the Complainant described its website as a “facade of legitimacy” and the business as a “sham”.
Splice.ai GmbH was founded in 2017 and awarded a grant by the Vienna Business Agency.
Panelist Nick Gardner summed up the many issues in Distributed Creation’s case in his reverse domain name hijacking decision:
The Complainant is professionally represented in this matter and, in the opinion of the Panel, knew or ought to have known that it had no reasonable chance of prevailing in this proceeding for the following reasons. First the Complaint takes no account whatsoever of the fact that SPLICE is an ordinary English word and there are multiple concurrent users of that word (see above). The Complaint reads as though the word SPLICE is a coined term that is uniquely associated with the Complainant and hence Respondent must have had Complainant in mind. That is not the case. Second the Complaint takes no account of the fact that Respondent had founded splice.ai GmbH which is an Austrian corporate entity and whose details were provided on the splice.ai website. To contrary effect Complainant portrayed the position in an extremely misleading manner by stating that “There is no evidence that Respondent has ever been known as “Splice,” and Respondent could only have selected the <splice.ai> domain name by appropriating Complainant’s distinctive trademark”. Complainant in the Complaint made no reference at all to the copyright footer on the splice.ai website, its reference to splice.ai GmbH and the link to further corporate information about that company. To compound matters the copy of the splice.ai website that Complainant placed in evidence was of extremely poor quality and the copyright footer barely legible. If the case had proceeded without a Response being filed it is quite likely that information would have been entirely overlooked.
Third Complainant characterized Respondent’s activities as “aggravated passive holding” which is not so far as the Panel is aware a recognized concept under any previous decided UDRP decisions. Complainant in this regard cited George Weston Bakeries Inc. v. McBroom, FA 933276 (Forum Apr. 25, 2007). That case concerned the domain name <gybakeries.mobi. which had been registered by the respondent to that case, had not been used at all, and the respondent had offered to sell it to the complainant for USD750,000. It does not establish a principle of “aggravated passive holding” and does not seem to the Panel to be of any relevance to the facts of the present case.
Fourth the Panel is satisfied that Complainant’s characterisation of Respondent’s business as a “facade of legitimacy” and a “sham” is unsupported by the evidence, inaccurate, and at odds with the documentary record submitted by Respondent. A functioning Austrian GmbH with corporate registration, government grant funding, filed accounts, vendor relationships, and a named management team is not a sham….
Jordan LaVine of Flaster Greenberg PC represented the Complainant, and John Berryhill represented the domain name owner.
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