AVK.com UDRP: Complaint Rejected

A company called AVK Holding A/S filed a UDRP against the valuable 3 letter .com domain name, AVK.com. The UDRP dispute was filed at the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC) and the decision was just published. Because of the venue, I did not notice this LLL.com UDRP filing until I saw it listed on UDRPSearch.com.

The respondent won the UDRP dispute and will keep its domain name, although it seems to have won based on a technicality rather than the merits of the case. Domain industry attorney Zak Muscovitch represented the domain registrant. Here’s an excerpt from the decision discussing why the panel ruled against the complainant:

“Section 3(b)(xii) of the Rules states: “The Complaint including any annexes shall be submitted in electronic form and shall … state that Complainant will submit, with respect to any challenges to a decision in the administrative proceeding canceling or transferring the domain name, to the jurisdiction of the courts in at least one specified Mutual Jurisdiction”.

This Panel agrees with the panel’s reasoning in WIPO Case No. D2003-0166 (The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc, National Westminster Bank plc A/K/A NatWest Bank v. Personal and Pedro Lopez), according to which the Mutual Jurisdiction rule was created as a sort of review process which would offer the losing party a venue that otherwise would not have personal jurisdiction over the Complainant. In order to provide a fairer opportunity, the Rules offer two choices for such jurisdiction: the place of the Registrar and the Respondent’s place of business/domicile. Both options are not supposed to exclude jurisdiction other courts might have with respect to the domain name. But this reasoning nevertheless shows that the Mutual Jurisdiction rule is an important element to ensure a fair process which must not be ignored by the Complainant.

Complainant’s Complaint in this proceeding does not comply with this formal requirement. According to the Complaint signature page, “Complainant submits itself to the applicable Mutual Jurisdiction as specified above” – but as no Mutual Jurisdiction is specified “above” in the Complaint (or anywhere else in the case file), this covenant is without any material effect. As a result, the Complainant has not submitted to a Mutual Jurisdiction as required by Section 3(b)(xii) of the Rules.

As the Complaint is deficient and the Complainant has failed to correct this deficiency, the Complaint is rejected on this formal ground (without prejudice to submission of a different complaint by Complainant, cf. Section 4(d) of the Rules).”

From what I can tell, because the dispute was decided based on a procedural issue, Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) was not considered. It remains to be seen if this UDRP will be refiled at CAC or elsewhere.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

4 COMMENTS

  1. These acronym UDRP claims are all a load of shit.com! Unless you are ATT and have developed real secondary meaning for a brand with an acronym they fail as a trademark and claims of marketplace contusion. These claims are really about trying to get a shorter business domain but they were late to the domain era. If my business or brand name is “Franks Unbelievable Colossal Kettlecorn” that would be a very long URL but that should not give me the right to stake a claim and file a UDRP to steal FUCK.com

  2. Multiple times by the same complainant? No. The next step is to file in court to stop a UDRP decision. I believe a different complainant can file but the respondent would have a precedent UDRP ruling for defense.

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