Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff

Domain Name Industry News and Website Stuff

Featured Domains

Russian car cam company guilty of reverse domain name hijacking

by — Policy & Law 5 Comments

Company wanted .com domain to match its .ru website.

Screenshot of the website CarCam.ru

The owner of CarCam.ru tried to get the domain CarCam.com but was instead found to have attempted reverse domain name hijacking.

A Russian electronics seller known for its car cameras has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking by a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panelist.

Limited Liability Company AV 808, which uses the domain name CarCam.ru, filed a cybersquatting dispute against the domain name CarCam.com.

The owner of CarCam.com registered the domain in 1996, well before the Russian company existed. The Russian company tried to buy the domain and filed the cybersquatting dispute under UDRP after its purchase attempts were rebuffed. In other words, it was a classic “Plan B” reverse domain name hijacking.

In finding that the case was brought in abuse of the cybersquatting policy, WIPO panelist Marilena Comanescu determined that:

the Complainant should have appreciated that establishing registration and use in bad faith in respect of a domain name which had first been registered seventeen years ago was likely to involve difficult considerations.

Supernanny wins domain name ahead of new season

by — Policy & Law 2 Comments

Show gets domain name after announcing new season on Lifetime.

Logo of Super Nanny TV show

The producer of Supernanny, a reality TV show featuring nanny Jo Frost, has won the rights to the domain name SuperNanny.com through a cybersquatting dispute.

The show debuted in 2004, so you might be surprised that the group waited until 2019 to file a UDRP cybersquatting case against the domain name. It turns out that at the end of March this year they announced a new season coming to the Lifetime network in 2020. They filed the cybersquatting dispute two weeks later.

Supernanny.com was originally registered in January 2000, well before the show debuted in Britain. Normally a domain name must be registered after trademark rights are established in order to win a UDRP. However, the show used historical Whois records to show that the domain name has changed hands multiple times since it was originally registered.

The owner of the domain name didn’t respond to the dispute, so the panelist gave the benefit of the doubt to the Complainant.

 

Sun Valley ski resort loses silly cybersquatting dispute

by — Policy & Law 4 Comments

Resort’s owner doesn’t withdraw case after it’s clear that it will lose.

Screenshot of SunValley.com

Not an accounting technology company.

Let’s say you’re the lawyer for an oil company that also owns ski resorts. One of those ski resorts is called Sun Valley.

You notice that someone registers the domain name SumValley.com (with an ‘m’ rather than an ‘n’). This might pop up on your radar as potential typosquatting. You visit the website and see that there’s a Wix placeholder on the domain name.

Now, you recognize that typosquatters don’t usually pay Wix to host a website. But you’re still concerned so you file a cybersquatting claim under UDRP with National Arbitration Forum.

The domain owner responds. It’s a husband and wife in Texas who have never skied. It turns out they are setting up an accounting/fintech business. They thought Sum Valley was a neat play on accounting and Silicon Valley. They registered the business with the Texas Secretary of State, got a federal tax ID from the IRS, opened a bank account and started invoicing customers.

At this point you drop the dispute, right?

Not Sinclair Finance Company, the arm behind oil company Sinclair that also manages its investments like Sun Valley ski resort in Idaho.

In fact, you double down by questioning why there’s no active website on the domain and say that it is reasonable to infer that the Texas couple registered the domain name with an ulterior motive, such as to disrupt Complainant’s ski business.

Sinclair obviously lost the case. If you can excuse it for filing the case, you can still question why it didn’t withdraw the dispute when it received additional facts.

The lawyer who represented Sinclar, J. Dustin Howell of Workman Nydegger, has previously filed two reverse domain name hijacking cases.

 

Tambour Ltd filed complaint that was “bound to fail”

by — Policy & Law 2 Comments

Paint company files abusive cybersquatting complaint.

Reverse domain name hijacking graphic

An Israeli paint company has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name Tambour.com. Tambour is a dictionary word in French that means ‘drum’.

Tambour Ltd uses the domain name Tambour.co.il.

The paint company reached out to the owner of the domain name and the registrant indicated he’d sell the domain name for $20,000. The valuation was based on the dictionary meaning of the word.

According to the written decision by the three-member World Intellectual Property Organization panel, the Complainant also indicated in its inquiry to the registrant that it had previously owned the domain. The respondent challenges this assertion.

The panel wrote:

…Had the Complainant acted diligently, it would have taken into account the lack of supporting evidence and the obvious potential defense that “tambour” is a dictionary word when deciding whether to file a complaint under the Policy against the Respondent. The Complainant is represented by counsel who must be taken to have studied to some degree the basic elements of the WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, and this is probably true since the Complaint includes references to this Overview. The Complainant’s counsel must have understood that the Complaint was bound to fail given the absence of any evidence to indicate bad faith on the part of the Respondent, but the Complainant was nevertheless filed after the unsuccessful attempt of the Complainant to acquire the disputed domain name.

Preminger & Co represented the Complainant. John Berryhill represented the domain owner.

HeadKandy.com: why no reverse domain name hijacking?

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Case was dead on arrival but panelist didn’t consider reverse domain name hijacking.

Head Kandy, LLC filed a cybersquatting complaint against HeadKandy.com.

National Arbitration Forum UDRP panelist Eugene I. Low has correctly decided in favor of the owner of HeadKandy.com in a cybersquatting complaint, but I’m perplexed why he didn’t consider reverse domain name hijacking.

Head Kandy, LLC filed the complaint. The company started using the Head Kandy mark in 2015 and uses the domain HeadKandyPro.com. The owner of HeadKandy.com registered the domain in 2006. According to Low’s decision, the Complainant knew that the domain owner formerly used the disputed domain name to sell its own “Head Kandy” hair extensions, but such use ceased in 2013.

In other words, the Complainant admitted that a) the domain owner had rights or legitimate interests in the domain and b) it wasn’t registered in bad faith.

Nevertheless, Low did not consider if it was a case of reverse domain name hijacking. The domain owner hired counsel to defend the domain name. At a minimum, it would have been nice for the panelist to admonish the Complainant for filing a complaint that was dead on arrival.