A company that sells wheels, tires and other auto parts filed a cybersquatting case in abuse of the policy.
An auto parts company has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a cybersquatting dispute.
SD Wheel Corp. filed a UDRP against TrailBuilt.com. But the registrant of the domain name owned it before SD Wheel’s claimed first use in commerce of the term and failed to show that the domain was registered in bad faith.
A three-member National Arbitration Forum panel found that the case was filed in bad faith:
The facts on this question in the record before us show the following:
- throughout this proceeding Complainant has been represented by experienced legal counsel;
- Complainant knew, or should have known, when it filed its Complaint, that Respondent had registered its domain name more than three months before Complainant filed an application for registration of the service mark upon which it relies;
- Complainant has offered no evidence showing that Respondent procured its domain name registration in bad faith anticipation of Complainant’s mark registration;
- Complainant filed its Complaint only after its efforts to purchase the domain name from Respondent had failed; and
- Complainant continued to prosecute this proceeding with the filing of an Additional Submission after the salient facts touching on the parties’ relative time priority in rights were laid before the Panel in Respondent’s Response.
On these facts, we find both that Complainant’s Complaint lacks merit, and that the parties’ submissions, taken as a whole, demonstrate that, in filing and prosecuting this proceeding, Complainant has attempted in bad faith to obtain through abuse of the processes of the Policy what it could not obtain to its satisfaction through negotiation. As a consequence, Complainant is guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking as defined in the governing Rules.
Davis & Kuelthau. s.c. represented SD Wheel Corp. The domain owner was represented by Kleiman Professional Legal Services.
