Strippers continued their act even after it was clear the domain wasn’t registered in bad faith.
A male stripper business in Australia has been found to have tried to wrongfully strip the domain name MagicMen.com from its owner.
Magic Men Holdings Pty Ltd, which uses the domain magicmen.com.au, filed a cybersquatting dispute to try to peel away the domain name.
The domain was registered by a magic hobbyist in 2002, well before the stripper company was founded.
The Complainant falsely claimed that the domain was registered after it was in existence. When the domain owner disputed that, the Complainant pressed forward with its case, arguing that “the Respondent has been aware of the Complainant’s rights since receiving the Complainant’s contact attempts but has refused to relinquish the disputed domain name.”
That, of course, doesn’t matter in a UDRP if the domain was not registered in bad faith.
World Intellectual Property Organization panelist Andrew Lothian found that this was a case of reverse domain name hijacking, writing (pdf):
In the present case, the registration date of the disputed domain name long predates the establishment of the Complainant’s rights, and also the establishment of the Complainant itself. There was no evidence that the Respondent acquired the disputed domain name after the Complainant’s rights accrued. The Complainant therefore knew or should have known that it could not succeed in demonstrating that the disputed domain name was registered in bad faith, given that the Respondent could have had no knowledge of it or its rights at the material date.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
