In yet what is becoming a long line of cases, a UDRP panel summarily dismissed a case against the owner of the domain name RockGaming.com which was registered over 10 years ago back on November 18, 2004
The complaint was brought by Rock Gaming LLC of Michigan who alleged in its complaint that it had “trademark rights in ROCK GAMING”
However on this issue the one member panel of Debrett G. Lyons determined “the critical question in this case is whether Complainant has trademark rights in ROCK GAMING. It is well established by decisions under this Policy that a trademark registered with a national authority is evidence of trademark rights. There is no evidence of a national trademark registration for ROCK GAMING. ”
“There is no express claim to common law rights. The Complaint merely references various (US) State based company registrations, not all of which even include the words, “Rock Gaming”. The oldest evidence is that of a Delaware company registration is from late 2010. Such certificates cannot stand in the place of proof of acquired rights through use and reputation. The evidence fails completely to prove the existence of common law trademark rights in ROCK GAMING and so the Complaint fails at the first hurdle.”
The panelist declined to even discuss the other two elements of the UDRP requirements and dismissed the complaint.
This is another case where the Complainant brought a UDRP knowing they didn’t have any legal rights to the term and alleging they did.
Once again saying you have a legal right without having any proof of legal rights is nothing less than misrepresenting material facts to the panel in an attempt to steal a domain name registered at least 6 years before the Complainant even started in business.
Attempted theft
Nothing less
The panel should have found Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
Yet the panel didn’t even discuss it.
Fail!
http://www.afr.com/p/technology/bhp_thwarted_by_web_squatters_kGOuDro2G0omKE5dr4wmSL
With media comments such as…
“Cyber squatting, the practice of buying up potentially popular web addresses in a bid to sell them to businesses, was prevalent in the early days of the internet as corporations were slow to latch on to the real-world value of virtual real estate. However, it has become less of an issue in recent times, and arbitration processes exist whereby companies can have proven squatters kicked out.”
…which provide the view that a business only has to prove someone is an evil dastardly cyber-squatter and hey presto you get the domain you want.
Forget the requirements the business has to actually show to prove their case.