Company falsely argued domain name was recently sold.
An Australian masonry firm has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a case involving tyrone.com.
Corcreevy Pty Ltd, which does business as Tyrone Group, filed the dispute against domain name investment company Anything.com, Ltd.
Anything.com acquired the domain name, which is a common first name, well before the Complainant existed. The Complainant argued that the domain had changed hands between 2022 and 2024. However, Anything.com showed that it acquired the domain well before that.
In finding reverse domain name hijacking, the three-person World Intellectual Property Organization panel wrote:
As noted above, the Complaint was advanced on the notion that the disputed domain name was acquired between 2022 and 2024. However, the Complainant’s assertions in this regard are not supported in evidence. Indeed, the evidence presented by the Complainant indicates that the Respondent’s ownership of the disputed domain name dated back to at least 2016. The Panel notes that there may have been doubt as to the identity of the registrant due to redaction of registration information in the publicly-accessible WhoIs record; however, any such doubt should have been removed upon disclosure of the registration information further to the Complainant’s submission of the Complaint to the Center. Despite this, the Panel notes that the Complainant chose to proceed with the Complaint containing factual statements that the Complainant should have recognized as being incorrect. Based on a plain reading of the Policy together with the prevailing facts at the time of submission of the amended Complaint and second amended Complaint, the Panel finds that the Complainant knew or should have known that it could not succeed. In light of the above, the Panel finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an attempt at Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
Note that this panel, consisting of Jane Seager, Luca Barbero, and Jeremy Speres, called out the continuation of the case after the registration data was revealed. Post GDPR, companies have the opportunity to amend their cases after the registrant’s details are revealed. Some panelists are apparently not aware of this.
Bennett Litigation and Commercial Law represented the Complainant, and ESQwire.com represented the domain owner.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
