Cleaning products company filed cybersquatting complaint against domain registered well before it existed.
Nuvik USA Inc., a manufacturer of cleaning products such as antibacterial wipes, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.
The company filed a cybersquatting complaint (PDF) with World Intellectual Property Organization against the domain name nuvik.com.
Unfortunately for Nuvik, a Hong Kong company registered the domain in 2010, nine years before Nuvik existed.
This meant the case was dead on arrival because Nuvik couldn’t show the domain was registered in bad faith.
Panelist Assen Alexiev determined the case was filed in bad faith as an attempt at reverse domain name hijacking:
The Complainant is represented by counsel. It alleges that the registration of the disputed domain name was an “intentional trademark and copyright infringement” and was made “to hold the Complainant hostage to a sale at inflated prices of its own company name”, that “the infringing domain is mimicking the exact registered and common law marks used by Complainant”, and that “[t]he sole purpose in maintaining the name nuvik.com was, and is, to cybersquat on a name that belongs to [the Complainant]”.
The Complainant however makes the above very serious allegations in spite of the fact that the disputed domain name was registered nine years before the Complainant and its trademark came into existence, and without submitting any supporting evidence. It must have been evident to the Complainant and to its counsel that in such circumstances it is unlikely for the Respondent to have targeted the Complainant with the registration of the disputed domain name, and that the Complaint cannot succeed. The Complainant nevertheless filed the Complaint and included the above statements in it, without addressing the issue that the disputed domain name was registered nine years before the Complainant and its trademark.
Mandelbaum Barrett PC represented Nuvik. No representative is listed for the domain owner.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
