Legal News

A company called Pet Plan Ltd. filed a UDRP against MyPetPlans.com at WIPO. This company has filed many successful UDRPs to protect its intellectual property, so it’s not a big surprise it took issue with this particular domain name. The complainant lost the UDRP proceeding but ended up getting control of the domain name despite this. The UDRP is WIPO Case No. D2021-0062.

The domain registrant did not submit an official response to the UDRP. Instead, upon receiving notice of default, the domain registrant told WIPO, “This dispute has been resolved via Nominet and the domain has been transferred to the complainant.” Presumedly because the UDRP was already paid for, the respondent’s preemptive decision to hand over the domain name did not cause the panel to terminate the UDRP or simply decide in favor of the complainant.

A three member UDRP panel decided the SHIL.com and HSIL.com UDRP was brought in bad faith, and a Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) ruling was made. The decision has not yet been published at the World Intellectual Property Organization, but it is case WIPO D2020-3416 and should be made public tomorrow.

The complainants in the UDRP are listed as HSIL Limited, Somany Home Innovation Limited / SHIL Ltd and Brilloca Limited. I was a bit confused about why different companies filed a single UDRP for more than one domain name, but it appears the companies are related to each other.

These two domain names are owned by a company called Get On The Web, which owns many short and valuable acronym domain name. Attorney John Berryhill represented the domain registrant in the UDRP, and he put up a strong case to defend the rights of the registrant and show that the UDRP should not have been brought at all. Not only did the panel rule in favor of the domain registrant, but the panel discussed several reasons for why this UDRP constituted RDNH:

I have been following the UDRP that was filed against the valuable IOC.com domain name at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The complainant in the UDRP is listed as the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and The International Olympic Committee.

IOC.com doesn’t get its value because it is the acronym for the International Olympic Committee. It has considerable value because it is a 3 letter .com domain name that can be used by any entity or person with IOC as its initials. According to an update on the WIPO UDRP case website, the UDRP was terminated:

The Clorox Company filed a massive UDRP at the World Intellectual Property Organization involving hundreds of new gTLD domain names. The case filing is WIPO Case D2021-0781. The 375 domain names involved in the UDRP all have .XYZ, .Shop, and .Club extensions. (Update: There are 4 .com domain names in the list, too) They all appear to incorporate the Clorox branding in the domain names.

The domain names involved in the UDRP are listed below, but keywords include terms like cmcloroxa, ascloroxa, and other variations which incorporate Clorox or typos of the brand name. I would imagine this should be a fairly easy win for Clorox given the amount of domain names that appear to be targeting the brand.

It’s not surprising that Hallmark Licensing, LLC, the company behind the iconic Hallmark brand, would want to have the Hallmark.TV domain name. In addition to owning various Hallmark-related entities, Hallmark Licensing operates the Hallmark Channel, and it uses the brand match HallmarkChannel.com domain name for this line of business. It may not need Hallmark.TV, but I am sure the company  would want to own the domain name.

Hallmark Licensing, LLC opted to file a UDRP complaint to take possession of Hallmark.TV. The decision was published today, and while Hallmark Licensing prevailed, the rationale for why the company prevailed is upsetting to me.