A UDRP was filed against the 4 letter DSPA.com domain name at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the decision was published today. The case was decided in favor of the domain registrant, a domain investor who owns a valuable portfolio of domain names. The 3 member WIPO panel ruled this was a case of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH). Attorney John Berryhill represented the domain registrant in the proceeding.
The complainant in the dispute was a company called DSPA B.V., which uses the DSPA.nl ccTLD domain name for its business. According to the decision, the complainant had owned the domain name several years ago, and the registrant acquired it in an expiry auction. Coincidentally, I was one of the four underbidders in this 2017 auction on NameJet.
In this decision, the panel once again acknowledged that domain investors have a legitimate right to register short acronym domain names as investments:
