Panelist cites false statements for RDNH finding.
Forma Brands, LLC, parent company of cosmetics company Morphe, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.
The company filed a UDRP against six domain names and argued that they seemed to be under common ownership.
It appears that five of the domains were used for copycat storefronts. But a simple look at the evidence shows that one of them, morpheuz.com, was unlikely to be owned by the entity that controlled the other five.
When the registrant of morpheuz.com responded to the dispute pointing this out, Forma continued with its case.
Panelist Ho-Hyun Nahm refused to consolidate the cases, and only let the case against morpheuz.com continue.
The domain owner acquired the domain from another person in 2016 with plans for building a sleep business. Morpheuz is a play on Morpheus, a god associated with sleep and dreams.
Nahm found that the registrant has rights and legitimate interests in the domain.
He also found reverse domain name hijacking, citing false statements related to common ownership of the domains:
(i) The Complaint is brought in circumstances where the only evidence in support of trademark notoriety in the MORPHE mark appears to be a screenshot of Complainant’s own website which states only “Born in 2008 among the artists and influencers of Los Angeles, MORPHE instantly disrupted the beauty industry by making artist designed, professional quality brushes affordable and accessible.” The website does not contain any financial figures Complainant contends exist in support of the notoriety of its mark MORPHE.
(ii) Complainant is legally represented by sophisticated counsel. Notwithstanding this, Complainant clearly made false statements regarding the commonalities between the disputed domain name and five (5) other domain names just by guessing. These are facts that Complainant could have easily verified with minimal diligence, and they further reveal that Complainant is advancing self- contradictory arguments. Namely, Complainant’s own chronology shows that the other five disputed domains were registered in 2025, while was created on July 3, 2011. Complainant’s consolidation allegations are internally inconsistent. It claims the Whois information is “the same,” yet reproduces different names, addresses, telephone numbers, countries, and email addresses. It also incorrectly asserts that all domains were created or updated around late 2025, contradicting its own chronology. Furthermore, Complainant’s statement that the domain “is still hidden behind a privacy service and so may be the same” is expressly speculative; possibility is not proof of common control. The disputed domain name used GoDaddy (domaincontrol.com) nameservers during the relevant periods and never hosted the copied MORPHE storefront. The copied site and consumer fraud evidence concerns the other domains. No Complaint annex identifies a common registrar account, payment source, DNS management account, host, revenue stream, person, communication, or business relationship connecting Respondent with those domains.
Crowell & Moring LLP represented Forma Brands in the dispute. No representative is listed for the respondent, although he submitted a sophisticated rebuttal.
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