A recent decision that came from WIPO highlights some circumstances where reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH) will most likely be found. The domain name at issue was maisondumonde.com. The important facts for RDNH were primarily pointed out by the Respondent:
According to the Respondent, at the time of registration of the disputed domain name, the Complainant was unknown outside France. Only now is it known in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain where it has opened stores in the last few years. In 1996, the Complainant’s product offer was primarily gifts and accessories, but not furniture. Even today, this continues to be the majority of their product offer in their brick-and-mortar stores, and much of the Complainant’s product range still concentrates on non-furniture products.
The Respondent alleges (but does not provide evidence to show) that the Complainant only offered furniture for sale gradually after 1996 and only started developing its website in 2004. The Complainant’s furniture sales business on the web only started to take off in 2006.
The Respondent states that his product offering has not changed significantly since 2000, when he first started selling furniture in brick-and-mortar stores, and via the Internet, through the disputed domain name which was registered at the same time, together with <maisondumonde.co.uk>.
Further, says the Respondent, when the disputed domain was registered in 2000, the Complainant was a small company in France and had no more claim to use the disputed domain name than anybody else in any country other than France where it had successfully received trade name protection in its home territory.
The Respondent goes on to provide his version of the discussions between the parties that started in 2006. As stated above, the Panel will not summarize those discussions in any further detail because it considers that they are not relevant for the present case.
The Respondent states (and provides evidence to prove) that the authority that rejected his opposition to the Complainant’s CTM application found that “one of the few undisputed points in the proceedings is the fact that the presented evidence is sufficient to prove that the opponent has actually used the name Maison Du Monde in the course of trade”, in particular in the UK, primarily in the London area. (emphasis added)
The Panel found that the Respondent did have some rights or legitimate interests in the domain name, from which it had been operating its business selling furniture since 2000, and also found that there was no evidence of bad faith on the part of the Respondent in registering the domain name.
In the present case, the Complainant knew that the Respondent was offering furniture for sale in 2000 when the Respondent first registered the disputed domain name, and the Complainant did not present any evidence showing that that business was not bona fide back in 2000. Further, the Complainant did not rebut, in its unsolicited rebuttal, the Respondent’s allegation to the effect that his activities were perfectly legitimate back in 2000. After having received the Response, the Complainant should have known that its case was insupportable under the Policy.
While the Panel does take good note of the Complainant’s allegations concerning the situation since 2006, it has no choice but to apply the Rules and to find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking, for the reasons explained above. (emphasis added)
The part that’s a little funky is “After having received the Response…” So, the Panel is creating a duty to withdraw a complaint? Hmm. In any event, they should have been prepared to argue that the Respondent knew about their business prior to starting his business in 2000. Still, I don’t see how they could have overcome the Respondent’s argument that their respective goods/services were not similar at that time (and thus it would not have been a trademark issue back then).
The Panel does wish to note, in addition, that the Response and the Respondent’s unsolicited submission were unnecessarily lengthy because they included certain allegations (not summarized above) and hundreds of pages of exhibits that were not relevant for the present case.
Looks like the Panel wasn’t very pleased with the amount of reading material it was subjected to. There are page limits, but they seem to be routinely ignored. Something to keep in mind: don’t annoy your panel! Although in this case it doesn’t seem to have affected the outcome.
A recent WIPO UDRP decision contains language to the effect that it is “reasonable” to infer that a registrant of a ccTLD domain name knew or checked the corresponding gTLDs for similar registrations. The UDRP case involved the domain name infotools.co, which is the ccTLD for Colombia, and has been marketed as an alternative to .com gTLDs.
The Panel notes the Respondent’s claim to want to use the Domain Name for future services of his/her company Technolyst.Inc in Colombia. The Panel finds this explanation highly improbable since this company does not appear to use the name anywhere “Infotools” on its website.
It is also apparent from the evidence that the Respondent and T. Dayal have registered large numbers of domain names. It is therefore reasonable to infer that they would have checked who owned the domain name <infotools.com> before registering <infotools.co> and found that it was the Complainant.
In these circumstances, it does not appear to the Panel that the Domain Name was directed to a web page containing sponsored links innocently as a temporary measure pending a genuine commercial use of the Domain Name. Rather, the Panel infers that the Respondent intentionally attempted to attract Internet users to the web page by creating a likelihood of confusion with the Complainant’s mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation or endorsement of the web page, for commercial gain in the form of click-through commissions. In accordance with paragraph 4(b)(iv) of the UDRP this constitutes evidence of bad faith registration and use, or at any rate would have done so if T. Dayal had remained the registrant.
The Panel further finds that the Domain Name was transferred to the present Respondent in bad faith in the hope of defeating the Complaint. The Panel infers that the Domain Name was registered in the name of the Respondent with the likely intention of continuing the previous use for sponsored links and/or with a view to sale to the Complainant at a profit.
In all the circumstances, the Panel finds that the Domain Name was registered and is being used in bad faith. (emphasis added)
So there was some shenanigans going on with transferring the domain name to attempt to avoid an adverse decision under the UDRP, which ultimately proved both futile and probably helped the Complainant’s case, as anyone who has children will know: when they’re acting guilty, they invariably have done something they shouldn’t have.
Still, this is an interesting decision because the panelist seems to believe that the registrant(s) knew about the company that owned infotools.com, and purposefully chose infotools.co to profit on the misdirected traffic (this is, in essence, a typosquatting case). And yet there’s a totally different side of this that the panelist didn’t get into: the generic nature of the mark at issue. Apparently that issue wasn’t raised because the respondent(s) did not raise it, and that’s a classic example of why you should protect your domain name portfolio. I think this one could have easily gone the other way.
It is usually the case that where a Respondent doesn’t bother to respond to a UDRP complaint, the Panel will mostly accept the Complainant’s arguments at face value. This seems self evident, almost analogous to a default judgment in a court proceeding. So when a case decision is published where the Respondent didn’t respond but still won, it’s worth taking notice.
Enter this recent denial by a WIPO panel, on the domain serv-air.com. The Complainant is a subsidiary of Air France, and operates a global catering business under its mark, SERVAIR, which was apparently registered in 2002. The domain name was registered in 2010.
The Complainant seemed to rely on the global scope of its business and its many other registrations of domains, especially ccTLDs, containing the SERVAIR mark. The Panel’s decision doesn’t describe whether any variations of the SERVAIR mark were registered, which is something I would have found important (as in, some registrations for “serv-air” or the like).
Even though the Respondent didn’t respond at all, the Panel determined that the requirement of bad faith registration and use, the third prong of the UDRP, had not been met by the complaint.
Apart from the fact that the disputed domain name has been found by this Panel to be confusingly similar to the Complainant’s trademarks for the purpose of the first element standing requirement, the Panel finds there is not much direct evidence of the Respondent’s intention to create a likelihood of confusion for the purpose of diverting Internet users to Respondent’s website based on the Complainant’s mark in particular. The Panel notes the website appears to be in use to post links to inter alia human resource services which bear little if any apparent relationship to goods and services provided by the Compliant under its SERVAIR mark. This is not a case in which, for example links to the direct competitors of the Complainant are in evidence. (emphasis added)
This is significant for domain developers. Pay-per-click advertisement pages, landing pages, link farms, whatever you want to call them, have been found to carry a sort of stigma of cybersquatting, but recently the tide has turned away from an automatic finding of bad faith and Panels have been more willing to consider the content displayed on the pages. This was especially important in the Octopus.com decision recently, where the travel-related links doomed the apparent generic use of the domain name, because it seemed to specifically target the trademark use of a company called Octopustravel Group Ltd. Lots of domainers cried foul about that case, and perhaps there’s an element of truth to the argument that “octopus” is a wholly generic term. But the Respondent apparently doomed itself with PPC links that directly related to the business of a company that use that term as part of its name.
Here, critically, the Respondent did not do that. And this was despite the Respondent’s allegedly poor history with respect to domain name registrations and the UDRP.
On the other hand, the Panel notes the evidence provided by the Complainant alleging that VALUE-DOMAIN COM has also registered and is using at least three other domain names that visibly infringe the rights of Société Air France’s subsidiaries. Evidently such consideration does little to assist the Repondnent.
However, this Panel finds such conduct per se (while suggestive) is not enough to tip a finding of bad faith use in the Complainant’s favour in the present finely balanced case.
Interpreting the case provided by the Complainant, SembCorp Industries Limited v. Hu Huan Xin, WIPO Case No. D2001-1092 regarding <sembcorp.com>: “surrounding circumstances would lead one to infer that the [r]espondent ‘knew’ or ‘ought to have known’ of the existence/trademark rights of the [c]omplainant”. All the evidence suggests that Respondent’s registration of the disputed domain name was calculated rather than accidental.
This Panel understands that while the Respondent may have been a respondent in several UDRP cases, which may reflect a pattern of behaviour, such past behaviour is not enough to determine bad faith use in present case where clear evidence of bad faith use, as the use of pay-per-click links to competitors’ websites is lacking.
The Panel is not convinced on the balance of the evidence in this case that in using the disputed domain name <serv-air.com>, VALUE-DOMAIN COM is intending to refer to the Complainant.
The Panel understand that the Complainant‘s business, although it is used by millions of people all over the world, does not necessarily correspond to a trademark of such notoriety, that a term like “serv-air” would necessarily bring to mind the Complainant’s trademark.
Although the Complainant has presented evidence that the Respondent is in the business of domain name speculation, in this case in particular, this Panel finds insufficient evidence of bad faith use to enable it to confidently find bad faith.
This Panel seems to say that where there’s no clear bad faith use currently, it will not necessarily rely on allegations of a poor history with respect to the UDRP. (This statement seems odd; if there’s clear evidence of bad faith currently, you shouldn’t have to point out a Respondent’s history. Though I guess you would normally do that, just for extra support. Still, if it’s not helpful in a borderline case, one wonders when or where it’s supposed to be helpful. It is, in point of fact, written into the definitions.)
As I’ve said elsewhere, if you’re engaging in the practice of parking pages with PPC ads, you would be well advised to ensure that the links provided do not reference any obvious (or perhaps even some nonobvious) trademarks. Since the business model depends on this, it might be a good idea to retain a lawyer to do a full review of the portfolio of web sites, to be sure there’s no possibility of a UDRP being filed.
