Panel finds chemicals company didn’t meet any of its burdens to prevail in a UDRP.
A Czech Arbitration Court panel has found that Advanced ChemBlocks Inc. attempted reverse hijacking of the domain name aablocks.com.
One of the complainant’s competitors, AA Blocks LLC, uses the domain name. “Blocks” is common terminology in the chemicals space.
The panel found that the complainant failed on all three prongs of the UDRP.
Advanced ChemBlocks made some interesting arguments. In a supplemental filing, it noted that AA Blocks had purchased products from it in 2019, and suggested this meant the respondent knew of the company when it registered its domain. But AA Blocks registered its domain in 2017, two years before the purchases.
The panel cited many reasons this was reverse domain name hijacking, including that the complainant submitted more than 200 annexes to its complaint:
In the circumstances of the present case, the Panel finds that the Complaint constitutes Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
The cumulative effect of several factors supports such a conclusion.
In particular, the Complainant’s registered Trademark postdates the registration of the disputed domain name, while the trademark registration itself contains an express disclaimer regarding the relevant word elements. The record further demonstrates widespread descriptive use of the term “blocks” – the only term of the Complainant’s Trademark used in the domain name – within the relevant industry, a circumstance acknowledged by the Complainant’s own evidence and declaration. The Panel also considers that several of the Complainant’s arguments were strained in nature, including the alleged “striking similarity” between the parties’ websites based largely on commonplace website terminology, generic structural elements, or ordinary conventions such as the use of email addresses containing “@sales”.
The Panel finds that the professionally represented Complainant should have appreciated that it could not succeed under any fair interpretation of facts reasonably available prior to the filing of the Complaint, including information on the Respondent’s website indicating Respondent’s legitimate interests as a bona fide business owner, and the professionally represented Complainant unreasonably ignored established Policy precedents, including established case law and consensus views expressed in WIPO Overview 3.1.
The fact that the parties operate in the same sector and appear to be commercial competitors further suggests that the present dispute is more akin to a business or trademark dispute than a clear case of cybersquatting within the intended scope of the UDRP.
The Panel further notes that the Complaint was accompanied by more than 200 annexes, in addition to further annexes submitted with the supplemental filing, many of which were cumulative or of limited relevance to the issues requiring determination under the Policy.
While parties are entitled to substantiate their claims, the volume and nature of the materials submitted by the professionally represented Complainant in the present case are difficult to reconcile with the streamlined and summary character of UDRP proceedings, which are intended to provide an efficient mechanism for resolving clear cases of cybersquatting.
In light of the above, the Panel finds that the Complaint constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding and amounts to Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
Dimov Internet Law Consulting represented the complainant, and ESQwire.com represented the domain name owner.
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