Domain name was registered before the Complainant existed.
A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has found (pdf) Lifeware SA to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking.
Lifeware SA filed a case against lifeware.com, which was registered in 1995. Lifeware wasn’t incorporated until 1998. Assuming that the current registrant was the original registrant, that means the case was doomed to fail on the question of registration and use in bad faith.
If Lifeware thought the domain had changed hands since 1998, it didn’t explicitly make that case. (It’s unclear to me if it has changed hands. The domain registrant didn’t respond to the case. Historical records at DomainTools show three different named owners and three addresses, but all in St. Augustine, Florida, suggesting that it’s the same overall registrant.)
Panelist Warwick A. Rothnie wrote:
Despite this detailed familiarity with the Policy, the Complainant has not attempted to deal with the basic problem that the disputed domain name was first registered some three years before the Complainant was founded. Instead, the Complainant argued that the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name:
“(i) the Respondent has never been known and is not known under the wording “lifeware”;
“(ii) the Respondent has not been licensed or authorized by the Complainant to register the disputed domain name;
“(iii) the Respondent cannot assert that its use of the disputed domain name is in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services or a noncommercial use; and
“(iv) the Respondent is not related in any way to the Complainant’s business.”
This is essentially an argument that the disputed domain name should be transferred to the Complainant because the Respondent is not using it. That alone is not sufficient to warrant an order of transfer under the Policy. At this stage in the life of the Policy, the Complainant should have known it needed to address the registration of the disputed domain name several years before the Complainant came into existence and could not simply rely on the apparent non-use of the disputed domain name.
M. ZARDI & CO represented Lifeware SA.
AbdulBasit Makrani says
Thanks for sharing.