Talk about a waste of time and money.
You probably will never find a better case for providing a penalty for someone who brings a groundless Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) proceeding than this one.
As you may know unlike the UDRP which at least carries a potential “penalty” in the form of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) a URS carries no similar “penalty”
In this case the URS involved a three letter generic new gTLD domain.
The domain name Bas.Graphics was registered by QA Graphics of Ankeny, IA.
The Complaint was brought by BAS Services & Graphics, LLC. of Austin, TX, not exactly a household name.
The URS examiner, Mr. Sebastian Matthew White Hughes, gave the complaint a swift kick out of the door finding that the Complainant didn’t even have a registered trademark much less a trademark submitted to the Trademark Clearing House (TMCH) but instead showed up with its 2011 Name Certificate filed with the State of Texas ; its 2014 Florida Limited Liability Company Annual Report; its Articles of Organization; and its Application for Registration of Fictitious Name for “Building Automation Systems Service.
The examiner correctly found that “None of these documents constitute a valid national or regional word mark registration. Complainant has not provided any evidence to satisfy the first limb of the URS. It follows that the Complaint must be denied on these grounds alone.”
However the The Examiner went further to find the Registrant “has been providing services relating to BAS graphics since 2006 and therefore has a legitimate right or interest to the domain and Complainant has failed to establish the domain was registered and is being used in bad faith.”
“”””Respondent contends, as Complainant possesses no relevant trade mark rights, as the incident of consumer confusion relied upon by Complainant predated the date of registration of the domain name, as BAS graphics is a generic term, and as Respondent has been successful in relation to BAS graphics, these proceedings have been brought in order to harass Respondent, and constitute an abuse of the proceedings.
“It appears the proceedings have been brought under the misapprehension that Complainant can rely on common law rights, including Complainant’s various company registration documents. The evidence does however show that Complainant possesses prior common law rights in the term BAS graphics, if nothing else, by virtue of Complainant’s prior registration of the domain name
“In all the circumstances, the Examiner is not prepared to make a finding that the Complaint is an abuse of the proceedings or that the Complaint contained material falsehoods.”
