Domain was registered prior to first use date in trademark.
A gold and precious metals dealer has been found to have tried to reverse hijack the domain name GoldRushDallas .com.
Complainant Erik Harp d/b/a Gold Rush, has locations in Texas and Colorado and uses the domain names goldrushhouston.com and goldrushdenver.com.
The Complainant has a trademark for Gold Rush that claims a first use in commerce date of January 2011. But the domain at issue was registered in March 2010 by a Dallas-area man.
This meant the UDRP would fail because the Complainant was unable to show that the domain was registered to target a non-existent trademark.
In finding reverse domain name hijacking, panelist Alan Limbury wrote:
As noted in Exhibit D to the Complaint, the goldrushdallas.com domain name was registered on March 17, 2010, prior to the claimed 2011 first use in commerce of Complainant’s GOLD RUSH mark, registered in 2019. Accordingly, Respondent could not have had Complainant and its then non-existent trademark in mind when registering the domain name, a fact which must have been known to Complainant and its Counsel when filing the Complaint. The Panel therefore finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.
Leak, Douglas & Morano, PC represented the Complainant. The domain owner didn’t respond to the dispute.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
