Wasteless Upgrades to Wasteless.com via Terminated UDRP

I was looking at UDRPSearch.com this morning, and I saw a UDRP filing I had not noticed before involving the Wasteless.com domain name. From my perspective, Wasteless.com or WasteLess.com (depending on the proper case) is a pretty generic domain name. In addition, Wasteless.com was created way back in 1996. In taking a very cursory look at the domain name and creation date, I do not believe this was going to be an easy UDRP for the complainant to win.

Making this even less of a UDRP candidate (in my view) is the fact that this domain name has seemingly been registered to the same entity, WasteLess Environmental Services Inc., since the earliest Whois record archive in 2001, according to DomainTools. Furthermore, the registrant had a @WM.com email address indicating that the domain name was owned by (or affiliated with) Waste Management, which I believe is the largest company in that entire industry and well capable of defending its right to own this domain name.

Although I did not notice this UDRP when it was initially filed earlier this year, I was not surprised to see that the UDRP was terminated. I believe this happens when the complainant agrees or opts to terminate the proceeding for whatever reason, often when the two parties reach some sort of settlement. This regularly happens when an agreement is made to sell the domain name or the cancelation of Whois privacy reveals the UDRP as unwinnable. Since there was no Whois privacy in this case, it would seem the complainant knew what it was up against when the UDRP was filed.

Following the UDRP termination, Wasteless.com is now registered to a different entity, and the domain name is being used by a company called Wasteless. From what I can tell, the current registrant was the complainant in the UDRP. It looks like the registrant had been using Wasteless.CO for its website, and Wasteless.CO now forwards to Wasteless.com.

My uneducated guess is the company tried to buy Wasteless.com from the Waste Management entity that owned the domain name, and it did not get anywhere. The UDRP was filed either to get the attention of WM or because Wasteless believed it somehow had a right to the Wasteless.com domain name, even though LinkedIn indicates the company was founded in 2016 and the domain name was owned long before that.

In the end, I would imagine the companies were able to work out an agreeable deal to sell Wasteless.com in lieu of proceeding with the UDRP.

If this is what transpired, I think it was a smart move for the complainant to settle the UDRP and buy the domain name. I do not see how the UDRP would have been winnable, and I would have been surprised if it did not end in a Reverse Domain Name Hijacking decision.

Without knowing any specifics, I can’t speculate about whether the UDRP ended up causing the domain name to increase in price/value, but I would not be surprised. From my perspective, UDRP filings like this usually end up in a RDNH finding or a UDRP loss. In this case, filing a UDRP worked out and Wasteless was able to upgrade to Wasteless.com. My bet is the domain name was expensive.