Fragrance company tries to reverse hijack domains from Procter & Gamble

Consumer products giant registered domains before fragrance company existed.

A fragrance company attempted to reverse hijack two domain names from consumer product giant Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), a World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has ruled (pdf).

Red Matter Holdings Inc. (d/b/a MiN NEW YORK) filed the dispute against the domain names ScentStories.com and ScentStory.com.

P&G registered the domain names in 2004 for an extension of its Febreze air freshener line, offering disks that would “play” different scents every thirty minutes. The company discontinued the scent disk product in 2008.

The complainant didn’t exist until after P&G had marketed the product. But it argued that the domain was somehow renewed in bad faith.

Given the circumstances, panelist Scott Blackmer had no problem finding that the domain wasn’t registered and used in bad faith.

Even though the complainant was self-represented, Blackmer determined this case was an attempt at reverse domain name hijacking. He wrote:

The Panel notes in this case that the Complainant is not represented independently by legal counsel, and the Complainant’s president, who acts as its representative, is not listed as a member of the bar of Nevada or New York. Nevertheless, the Complaint acknowledges the apparent difficulty where both disputed domain names pre-date the Complainant’s trademark applications by many years. The Center makes available WIPO Overview 3.1 as a resource, which plainly addresses the timing issue, yet the Complaint cites no authority for the bald assertion that “this temporal sequence does not preclude the UDRP claims at issue”. Moreover, the Complainant asserts bad faith because the Respondent allegedly failed to reply to the Complainant’s communications before filing UDRP complaints. The Respondent denies that any such communications occurred, and the Complainant offers no proof of them.

The complainant is no stranger to high-quality domain names: it uses min.com for its website.

Studio Barbero S.p.A. represented Procter & Gamble.