Domain was registered well before rapper SNSG used the acronym as a stage name.
A rapper who goes by the stage name SNSG has been found (pdf) to have tried reverse domain name hijacking the domain snsg.com.
Manuel Alex Mendoza Cabanyog’s company, SNSG Company, LLC, filed the dispute against the domain name with the World Intellectual Property Organization.
He inquired about buying the domain name in January 2024 but was unwilling to pay the $60,000 asking price.
Instead, he filed a UDRP in September of this year. Shortly after filing the dispute, the Korean domain name registrant of snsg.com contacted him and told him the case would not succeed because the domain was registered well before he had trademarks in SNSG.
The parties then negotiated a $10,000 purchase, but the deal fell apart over payment terms.
The case proceeded, and panelist Ian Lowe found in favor of the registrant. Lowe also found reverse domain name hijacking, writing:
In this case, although the Complaint was prepared by the Complainant acting through its lay representative, even the most casual research into how to prepare a complaint under the UDRP would have made it quite apparent that a complaint based on trademark rights acquired some 19 years after the Domain Name was registered, and 15 years before the Complainant came into existence, could not possibly succeed. Indeed, without any credible evidence of bad faith registration it should also have been quite apparent that the Complainant could not succeed as to any of the three elements; indeed this was pointed out by the Respondent but ignored by the Complainant.
Ankur Raheja of Cylaw Solutions represented the domain name owner.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
