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Panelist declines RDNH because…well, I don’t know

by — Policy & Law 2 Comments

Moonchul Chang doesn’t give a reason for not finding reverse domain name hijacking in a dead-on-arrival case.

Logo for World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, showing the words plus 7 swooping linesA World Intellectual Property Panelist has decided a UDRP decision for the domain name MIAX.com in favor of the domain name owner. But for an inexplicable reason, he declined to find reverse domain name hijacking.

The circumstances have all of the trappings of reverse domain name hijacking:

  • Domain owner registered it in 2000
  • Complainant wasn’t formed until 2007 and the trademark it relies on was registered in 2015 with first use claim of 2012
  • Complainant sent several communications to the domain owner, which the owner describes as “offers” and then a cease & desist
  • Company files UDRP

Based on the information in the published decision, it’s a classic case of RDNH. The domain owner asked for RDNH, but panelist Moonchul Chang declined to find it without really giving a reason. Instead, he merely wrote:

The Panel cannot conclude that the Complainant filed its Complaint in bad faith for the purposes of RDNH, and mere lack of success of the Complaint is not in itself sufficient for a finding of RDNH.

The Panel is of the opinion that the Complainant has not filed its Complaint in bad faith as an attempt at RDNH.

That’s like a panelist ruling that a domain was registered in bad faith by writing “The panel concludes the domain was registered in bad faith” without giving any reason.

Instead, according to the information in the decision, this case was dead on arrival due to the chronology.

The Complainant, Miami International Holdings, Inc, was also represented by counsel. It uses the domain name MIAXoptions.com.

Registration now open for Fashion.com domain name auction

by — Domain Sales 18 Comments

Original owners of domain name send it to the auction block.

the word "fashion" with "Make it your domain" below on a background of red, gold and blue fabric

Companies interested in acquiring the valuable domain name Fashion.com can now register for the auction at Fashion.com.

The auction will begin October 24 and it follows an unusual format.

It begins with a sealed bid auction process in which bidders can submit a single bid. Once someone bids the secret “buy now” price, that bidder wins the auction so long as no other company submitted a higher bid on the same day. It seems that the most likely scenario of having multiple bidders meet the reserve price on the same day would be on the first day of the auction.

If none of the sealed bids meet the reserve price, the sellers will either accept the highest sealed bid or push the domain to a public auction. The reserve price carries over to the public auction.

Escrow.com is handling the financial side of the auction. It will hold $25,000 bidder deposits and be the escrow for the winning bidder. Amsterdam company Auction-Experts will manage the bidding.

 

Sudoku.net sells for £42,500, showing .net isn’t dead

by — Domain Sales 7 Comments

This sale shows the .net market isn’t dead.

The word .NET on a background of computer hardware

If there’s one big top level domain that was hurt by the launch of new top level domain names, it’s .net. .Net has typically been a “darn, I couldn’t get the .com” domain extension. Now people can choose from a bunch of other options.

So the sale of Sudoku.net at Sedo for £42,500 (which just came across the company’s RSS feed) is notable. It’s the equivalent of about $53,000 at today’s exchange rate.

NameBio’s all-time list of .net sales over this amount totals 63 names. But no .net domains have publicly sold for this much in the past 12 months.

It’s a big sale for a .net domain, and it shows a bit of life for the extension.

The buyer appears to be a company called Edito. Although the domain was once forwarded to a Sudoku site, it doesn’t appear to have been for many years and a backlink check shows no links.

Glovo App maker found to have tried reverse hijacking

by — Policy & Law 5 Comments

They should have checked historical Whois records.

Image of the Glovo delivery app in the Apple Appstore

A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has found that the maker of the Glovo app for delivery attempted reverse domain name hijacking of the domain name Glovo.com.

The Spanish company uses the domain name GlovoApp.com.

Glovo.com was registered in 2001, well before the app maker was founded in 2015. So the panelist found that the domain could not have been registered in bad faith to target the app maker.

Panelist Matthew Kennedy found that the complaint was brought in bad faith because of the dates, noting that the domain owner made Glovo aware of these dates before it filed its complaint.

But it’s here that the Complainant’s attorney made a mistake. Based on historical Whois records, it appears that the Chinese owner of the domain name didn’t acquire the domain until 2016. It was previously owned by a company in California and then Sedo’s DomCollect.

Per UDRP precedent, the Complainant could have shown that the domain was registered after the company was founded because of the transfer date.

It still would have had to show bad faith, which would have been difficult, but it would have cleared the hurdle that made its case dead on arrival.

Nonetheless, the fact that Glovo filed the case when it thought 2001 was the relevant date is indicative of filing the case in bad faith.

Pablo Escobar posthumously gets his domain name

by — Policy & Law 5 Comments

Panelist doesn’t question trademarks for dead drug lord.

Screenshot of EscobarInc.com website promoting a flamethrower for sale

Escobar Inc. holds a number of tradmearks for “Pablo Escobar”, the infamous druglord. The company sells a flamethrower (pictured).

Pablo Escobar has returned from the grave.

The notorious Colombian drug lord may have died in a shootout in 1993, but his intellectual property and holdings live on through Escobar Inc.

Escobar Inc. filed a cybersquatting claim with National Arbitration Forum, arguing that the owner of PabloEscobar.com was cybersquatting with his ownership of the domain name. According to the decision, the domain owner was asking $3 million for the name.

Panelist Terry Peppard didn’t question Escobar Inc’s trademark claims and the domain owner didn’t respond. I don’t know that I would have, either.

Due to some untimely deaths, Escobar Inc. went under the radar for a while. But it was reincorporated in 2014, at which point it applied for intellectual property related to Pablo Escobar. Then it started litigating its rights, including suing Netflix over its show Narcos.

Among the fields of use for its trademarks are balloons, toys and games, and prize ribbons. You know, stuff you’d associate with Escobar.

Its latest businesses? Cryptocurrency (why not) and flamethrowers.

Escobar Inc’s website brags about earning over $100 billion since it was established in 1984 (before Pablo’s death).