Developer argued domain was renewed in bad faith, and omitted critical details in its filing.
A Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) panel has found that Reinsch, Inc., E. G., and Tri-State Communities LLC attempted reverse domain name hijacking.
The parties filed a cybersquatting dispute against the domain name ChainBridgeEstates.com.
Tony Rivera, who was involved in an entity that created the Chain Bridge Estates retirement community in Virginia, is the domain registrant.
He registered the domain when he conceived of the project. His interest in the project was foreclosed on, but he retained the domain name.
The parties are disputing certain project assets, including the domain name. It’s a business dispute outside the remit of UDRP.
The complainant were hardly forthcoming in their filing. They didn’t explain the business relationship between the parties.
Furthermore, they argued the domain was renewed in bad faith, which isn’t a thing under UDRP.
A three-person panel found this was attempted reverse domain name hijacking for three reasons:
- The evidence supporting trademark rights was just a minor social media presence. The panel found no trademark in the first prong of the UDRP.
- The complainant cherry-picked a single case to suggest renewal in bad faith was a thing, despite well-settled case law stating that it’s not.
- The complainant left out critical details, including “that Respondent was the founder and former manager of Tri-State Communities LLC, that he registered the Domain Name while he was the manager, that Respondent previously (through Bloomsbury) held an ownership share in Tri-State Communities LLC, and that Complainant and Respondent are presently in an ongoing business dispute over the ownership of various assets in connection with the Chain Bridge Estates development.”
Bean Kinney & Korman, PC, represented the complainant, and Jeffrey Neumann represented the domain owner.
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