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Royal Caribbean Cruises loses UDRP against James Booth for RCC.com

by — Policy & Law 10 Comments

Company uses RCCL.com for corporate email and some email was misdirected.

Picture of three Royal Caribbean cruise ships on the ocean with a cityscape in the back

Picture of Royal Caribbean ships from the company’s website. The company lost a cybersquatting case it filed to get RCC.com.

Royal Caribbean Cruises has lost a cybersquatting claim it filed against domain broker James Booth of BQDN.com over the domain name RCC.com.

Booth has bought/sold about 250 three-letter domain names and acquired this domain with similar plans. A couple of years after acquiring the domain, he turned on an email catchall and found that people were emailing sensitive information intended for the cruise line to RCC.com. Royal Caribbean uses RCCL.com for its email addresses.

It was at this point that things get a bit confusing. Even though Booth is a broker himself, the case states that Booth hired a broker to contact Royal Caribbean about the misdirected email and inviting them to buy it. That overture stated:

“Do you want me to continue to forward these emails? / I think you have a major problem here, not just because of the confusion from your customers not getting their emails answered but also email security. At some point RCC.com is going to sell and the new owners may not be as nice to forward your info. / Let me know if you have time to talk this week.”

Booth admitted that it was “an arguably ill-considered solicitation.”

Of particular concern to Royal Caribbean is that Booth shared the emails with an apparent outside party (the domain broker). That’s a bad idea.

Still, the panel found that the domain was likely not registered to target Royal Caribbean, and instead because of the acronym value of RCC.com.

Zak Muscovitch represented Booth in the UDRP.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation loses attempt to get ABC.net

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Australian public broadcaster loses attempt to get 24-year-old ABC.net domain name.

Screenshot of ABC.net.au for Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Australian Broadcasting Corporation lost its attempt to get ABC.net

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Australia’s national broadcaster, has lost a cybersquatting complaint it brought against the domain name ABC.net.

The broadcaster failed to convince a World Intellectual Property Organization panelist that the domain name was registered in bad faith. After all, it’s a very common term.

The domain owner registered it in 1995 while working at an ISP, and later put the domain name to use.

ABC didn’t seem to mind much about the domain until the domain owner contacted it in 2017 advising that he was receiving misdirected emails.

This is the second UDRP decision in as many days in which misdirected email was discussed. In both cases, the owner of a ccTLD was losing email to another domain. ABC’s website is ABC.net.au. In a recent case for Farrer.com, the Complainant used farrer.co.uk and was losing email to the .com.

Panelist Rober Badgley did not find that ABC filed the complaint as attempted reverse domain name hijacking. He noted that, while its complaint was slanted to its preferred narrative, it did not make false statements or glaring omissions. Badgley wrote, “this may be more a case of lacking appreciation of the nuances of this case than a calculated attempt to wrest a domain name from an innocent and smaller party.”

Farrer & Co law firm loses cybersquatting dispute

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Company tries to get matching .com that receives misdirected email.

Screen grab of Farrer & Co website and web address Farrer.co.uk

Not .com, and that’s causing issues for this law firm.

If you don’t own the .com version of your domain name, you are likely missing emails intended for your company.

That’s why law firm Farrer & Co LLP filed a UDRP against Farrer.com. It uses Farrer.co.uk, and it learned that clients sent sensitive information to email addresses at @Farrer.com.

The firm lost the dispute, though.

A three-member World Intellectual Property Organization panel found that Farrer didn’t show that the owner, which runs an IT firm, lacked legitimate rights or interests in the domain. It also didn’t show that the domain was registered in bad faith.

The panel pointed out that the law firm could have obtained the domain on a couple of occasions as it has changed hands twice since it was originally registered in 1997.

It appears that the current registrant acquired the domain in a NameJet auction in 2012 for only $3,100.

The panel stopped short of finding Farrer & Co LLP to have filed the case in bad faith.

Adobe is really annoyed by this Dominican man’s “photo shop”

by — Policy & Law 14 Comments

Photoshop maker takes another stab at getting his domain names. It fails.

Screenshot of PhotoshopCaribe.com, a domain name that Adobe says is cybersquatting on its Photoshop brand

A Dominican Republic photographer has had to defend his domain names twice.

Photoshop publisher Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) has tried (and failed) for a second time to take away the domains of a photographer in the Dominican Republic.

The company first filed a cybersquatting claim against Photoshop del Caribe, S.R.L in 2016, claiming that its use of PhotoshopCaribe.com was cybersquatting. The Dominican Republic company successfully defended that case because Adobe didn’t show that the domain was registered in bad faith. Adobe failed to show that its Photoshop mark was well known in the Dominican Republic when the photographer registered the domain in 2006 and chose his company name years before that.

Fast-forward to 2019. Adobe filed another cybersquatting dispute against both the original domain PhotoshopCaribe.com and PhotoshopdelCaribe.com. Since the original case was filed, Adobe has successfully gotten Photoshop del Caribe’s tradename registration in the Dominican Republic canceled.

The owner of the domains said he had no idea about the tradename cancellation until it received the new cybersquatting complaint. It is appealing the cancellation.

The World Intellectual Property Organization declined to hear the case on PhotoshopCaribe.com since Adobe already lost a dispute against the domain in 2016. It did consider if PhotoshopDelCaribe.com is a case of cybersquatting, but decided that Adobe didn’t show it was registered in bad faith.

Panelist Adam Taylor noted that Adobe didn’t remedy its shortcomings from the first case it lost.

Photoshop is powerful software, but it can’t manipulate old cybersquatting cases to make them look like they never existed.

Overspray company Overreaches in cybersquatting dispute

by — Policy & Law 2 Comments

Company tries to get control of competitor’s domain but is nailed for reverse domain name hijacking instead.

Photo of car with overspray paint

An overspray removal company has been found to have tried reverse domain name hijacking a domain name through UDRP.

National Overspray Removal, LLC filed a cybersquatting complaint with National Arbitration Forum over the domain name nationaloversprayremovalservice.com.

The domain is owned by another Texas company that does overspray removal, a service for removing overspray paint and other chemicals from autos.

The Complainant relied on a trademark it filed in 2017 claiming first use in June 2010. But the Respondent registered the domain in May 2010. Furthermore, it’s clear the Respondent is using the domain for a business.

Noting the dates, panelist Steven M. Levy found in favor of the Respondent and reverse domain name hijacking.

The two parties are currently embroiled in a court case over the name.