UDRP was denied.
DataMiner.com, a generic, aged domain registered in 1996 was served with a UDRP.
Skyline Communications NV of Izegem, Belgium, claimed rights to the DATAMINER trademark, which was registered on July 12, 2016.
That’s a full 20 years after the domain DataMiner.com was registered, even before the Complainant’s alleged first use to the mark in 2001.
According to the UDRP, the Respondent pointed out that the Complainant pestered them with unsolicited offers to buy the domain:
“The Complainant contacted the Respondent in 2005 to purchase the disputed domain name and did not succeed. It then contacted again the Respondent in 2010, making an unsolicited offer acknowledging that the Respondent was the owner of the disputed domain name. In 2014, the Complainant made another unsolicited and unsuccessful offer.”
A three member panel at the WIPO, found that there was not a shadow of “bad faith” in the domain’s registration:
“In the view of the Panel this is a complaint which should never have been launched. The Complainant and its lawyer should have appreciated that establishing registration and use in bad faith in respect of a domain name which had first been registered nearly two decades ago was likely to involve difficult considerations.
The Complainant appears to have ignored any such considerations. The Complainant should have known that there was no case under the third requirement of the Policy, due to the lack of any use in bad faith of the disputed domain name.”
Not only was the request to transfer the domain denied, the Complainant was served with a Reverse Domain Name Hijacking finding.
For the full text of the UDRP decision for the domain DataMiner.com, click here.
