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NHL.cc owner forgoes $6,000, loses domain to NHL

by — Policy & Law 0 Comments

National Hockey League wins cybersquatting dispute against the domain NHL.cc.

NHL logoThe National Hockey League has won a cybersquatting case it brought against the owner of NHL.cc. .CC is the country code for Cocos Islands but is generally used as a generic domain extension.

A Chinese man who registered the domain claimed he hadn’t heard of the NHL when he registered the domain. He noted that it’s too hot to play ice hockey in Zhengzhou, China and that most people in China didn’t become aware of the sport until 2015 when Beijing was selected to host the 2022 Olympic games.

Whether or not this is true, the domain owner didn’t help his case by explicitly calling out that NHL stands for National Hockey League on his website (see image above).

The text roughly translated to “The National Hockey League is a shorthand NHL (French: Ligue Nationale de Hockey), a shorthand LNH, a professional sports league composed of North American ice hockey teams.”

The NHL first tried to buy the domain name. It cleverly refers to its overture to buy the domain as being undertaken by an “investigator”. It did not identify itself when it tried to acquire the domain. The NHL raised its offer to $6,000 but the domain owner’s last offer was $18,000.

I’m not sure that the panel got this case right and the fact that the NHL first tried to buy the domain could have been used as a defense. But once the domain owner added the National Hockey League reference to the site, he put himself in the corner needing to defend himself.

I bet the domain owner is kicking himself now for not accepting the $6,000 offer.

Italian company InfoCert tries reverse domain name hijacking

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Infocert S.p.a. files cybersquatting complaint in abuse of UDRP.

Reverse domain name hijacking graphic

Infocert S.p.a., which bills itself as the largest certification authority in Europe, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name InfoCert.com.

The company appears to use the domain names Infocert.digital and Infocert.it for its websites.

It filed a cybersquatting complaint under UDRP with World Intellectual Property Organization. The case was dead on arrival; the owner of the domain registered it in 1998, which was six years before Infocert started its business.

In finding reverse domain name hijacking, panelist Nick Gardner also noted that the Complainant neglected to mention that it tried to buy the domain before filing the cybersquatting dispute. He also said Infocert’s case that “infocert” was a coined word that could only relate to itself was wrong. It is an “obvious conjoining of the abbreviations for ‘information’ and ‘certificate’,” he noted.

Studio Torta S.p.A. represented the Complainant. Greenberg & Lieberman represented the domain owner.

Stolen domain lawsuit filed over $100k domain name 1001.com

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Company that bought domain name for $100,000 in 2013 says that it has been stolen.

Picture of thief at laptop computer

Netherlands corporation Diginus BV has filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against the domain name 1001.com, which it alleges was stolen from it.

The company paid $100,000 to acquire the domain name on Sedo in 2013, according to NameBio.

Based on historical Whois records, it appears that the alleged theft occurred in May this year. That’s when the Whois record changed from Namecheap Whois privacy to GoDaddy’s DomainsByProxy.

DomainsByProxy was subsequently removed to reveal a registrant in China.

Diginus filed the lawsuit in U.S. Federal District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, where .com registry Verisign is located.

David Weslow of Wiley Rein is representing Diginus.

AbdulBasit Makrani gets reverse domain name hijacking win

by — Policy & Law 15 Comments

Panel finds in domain investor’s favor over AguaDulce.com domain.

Reverse domain name hijacking graphic

Pakistani Domain name investor AbdulBasit Makrani has successfully defended his domain AguaDulce.com in a UDRP and the panel found reverse domain name hijacking.

Sociedad Puerto Industrial Aguadulce S.A. operates a marine terminal in Colombia. It uses the domain name PuertoaAguaDulce.com.

Agua Dolce translates to “Sweet Water” in Spanish.

The Complainant made a number of arguments in its case. One of these was a search engine printout showing its website in response to a search for aguadulce. But the result was way down the SERPs and there are lots of other sites that show up for the term. The panel wrote:

What both Parties’ searches do demonstrate, taken together, is that a range of alternative meanings and possible uses of the term “aguadulce” (or “agua dulce”) exist, the majority of which do not denote the Complainant or its mark. There is considerable emphasis to be found on these alternative meanings or uses in the Respondent’s search and this provides adequate support for his case that he was not aware of the Complainant when he came to register the disputed domain name and that he did so to take advantage of its dictionary meaning.

This reminds me of something John Berryhill said on DNW Podcast #244: Google is sometimes the best trademark database.

The Complainant also pointed out that the Respondent has been on the receiving end of three UDRP filings at WIPO, where the instant case was filed. It neglected to point out that the Respondent won two of the cases (and didn’t respond to the first).

The port owner also said the Respondent has been subject to proceedings at another UDRP administrator, but the panelists could not find any such cases.

Makrani said this was a case of a company trying to buy a domain and then resorting to UDRP after it didn’t like the price.

The majority found that the case constitutes reverse domain name hijacking.

Howard Neu represented AbdulBasit Makrani. Brigard & Castro represented the Complainant.

Writing about the case on his blog, Makrani stated that the Complainant’s law firm “are bunch of morons and Reverse Domain Name Hijackers who not only mislead the panelists by falsely mentioning that I was involved in other cases whereas they failed to provide any such reference but they also concealed the entire proceedings and the final outcome of my last two UDRP decisions which went completely in my favor.”

Second edition of ‘Domain Name Arbitration’ published

by — Policy & Law 8 Comments

An updated guide on UDRP.

Book cover from Domain Name Arbitration by Gerald Levine

Domain Name Arbitration, Second Edition by Gerald Levine

Domain name attorney Gerald Levine has published Domain Name Arbitration, Second Edition.

Levine published the first edition in 2015. That means thousands of additional UDRP cases have been decided in the interim that he was able to draw upon to update the book.

In the forward to the book, Levine notes that, in the second edition, “I have rewritten many of the sections; and where I have not added I have tweaked and refined my thoughts about the jurisprudence to make the principles, factors and concepts of the law more accessible.”

He has also included an expansive index.

The book is not light reading. It is designed for lawyers and intellectual property professionals to understand the nitty-gritty of UDRP. Many panelists would benefit from reading it, too.

Levine is perhaps the best writer on the topic of UDRP and anyone needing an in-depth understanding of UDRP should read it.

The book is available on Amazon.com.