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This WIPO panelist forgot something

by — Policy & Law 5 Comments

Vodacom filed dead-on-arrival case and domain owner said it was an abuse of the policy, but…

A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panelist has correctly found in favor of the registrant of VideoPlay.com, but he forgot something: to find the Complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

Vodacom (Pty) Ltd and Vodafone Group PLC filed the dispute against the owner of the domain who registered it in 2001. The earliest Vodafone can show any use of the term Video Play is 2014, according to the decision.

The Complainants tried to make a bad faith argument based on a single link on the site in 2003 pointing to what it says was an illegal download site. That’s a stretch…especially since the Complainant’s Video Play service didn’t exist until a decade later!

The domain registrant alleged that the Complainant “is misusing the UDRP system in an attempt to misappropriate the disputed domain name.”

For some reason, panelist Frederick Abbott did not formally decide on the issue of reverse domain name hijacking despite finding that the case was a bad one:

The Panel understands that Complainant thinks it would be a good idea to own the disputed domain name since it presumably has a commercial value to Complainant. But the Policy is not designed to accord rights to parties that think they have better uses for domain names than existing domain name registrants. Before an enterprise launches a commercial venture, it would be wise to investigate whether a domain name is available, or how much it might cost to purchase from a prior registrant.

 

AgSpace Agriculture tries to reverse hijack domain name

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Company filed a UDRP to try to get the unhyphenated version of its domain name.

Screenshot of the Ag-Space.com website

Farming tech company AgSpace filed a case in abuse of UDRP in an effort to get AgSpace.com. It uses the domain Ag-Space.com.

Farming technology company AgSpace Agriculture Limited has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking in its effort to get the domain name AgSpace.com. It uses the domain Ag-Space.com.

The company threatened the owner of the domain prior to filing a UDRP with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It urged the owner to accept a trivial cash offer or it would face a UDRP.

The domain owner, who registered the domain in 1998 (well before the Complainant existed) told the Complainant that it didn’t have a case.

But AgSpace filed the dispute anyway, and the panelist had an easy time finding that the case was filed in abuse of the policy.

Panelist Flip Jan Claude Petillion noted that:

In the present case, the Complainant expressly acknowledges in its Complaint that “the Disputed Domain Name was registered prior to the registration of AgSpace Agriculture limited”. The Complainant further provides “our case is based principally on the fact that the Respondent has no bona fide or legitimate use of the domain name of our trademark and has refused to release the domain or respond to our offer to meet the respondent’s reasonable out-of-pocket costs related to the domain”.

The panelist determined that AgSpace failed to show that the domain registrant lacked rights or legitimate interests in the domain and that it failed to show that it was registered in bad faith. In finding reverse domain name hijacking, the WIPO panelist wrote:

The mere lack of success of a complaint is not in itself sufficient for a finding of RDNH. In the present case, however, the Complainant knew it could not succeed as to the second and third element of the Policy as the Complainant had clear knowledge of the Respondent’s commercial identity corresponding to the Disputed Domain Name and the lack of bad faith by the Respondent. The Complainant expressly acknowledged that it knew that the Respondent had registered the Disputed Domain Name well before the Complainant had established its business or acquired its trademark rights. As a result, the Complainant clearly ought to have known it could not succeed under any fair interpretation of facts reasonably available prior to the filing of the Complaint. The website connected to the Disputed Domain Name has also never made reference to, let alone target, the Complainant or its mark and there are no indicia that would demonstrate that the Respondent intended to disrupt the Complainant’s business or create confusion with the Complainant’s trademark for commercial gain (see section 4.16, WIPO Overview 3.0).

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.

Mamar tries to reverse hijack domain from Mrs Jello

by — Policy & Law 4 Comments

Canadian company that owns Mamar.ca tries to get matching .com through UDRP.

Reverse domain name hijacking graphic

Mamar Group LTD, a Canadian company that sells products on Amazon and at Mamar.ca, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name Mamar.com.

The domain is owned by Mrs Jello, LLC, a domain investment company created by the late Igal Lichtman. It acquired the domain name in 2006.

Mamar Group was formed just last year, so it had no chance of winning a cybersquatting case under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). It would be impossible to show the domain was registered in bad faith to target a company that didn’t exist until 12 years later.

The company first tried to buy the domain before filing the UDRP.

In finding reverse domain name hijacking, panelist David Taylor wrote:

…in the present case, the Panel considers that it was clear from the information available to the Complainant at the time of filing, under a plain reading of the Policy and taking account of readily‑available Policy precedent, that the Complainant could not prove the Respondent’s bad faith registration of the disputed domain name. The Panel considers that the Complainant knew, or should have known, that it could not succeed in its Complaint under any reasonable interpretation of the Policy. The above, combined with the Complainant’s failed attempt to purchase the disputed domain name from the Respondent, leads the Panel to conclude that the Complaint was brought in bad faith in an attempt at RDNH and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.