In what appears to be only the second UDRP involving a dot .XYZ domain so far, the registrant of HuffingtonPost.XYZ alleged that the Complainant “does not have a valid trademark.”
The imbecilic statement was made with full ignorance of the registered trademark for “Huffington Post“, a mark registered in 2006.
The Complainant, America Online, is the mother company of The Huffington Post and served the Respondent, Michael Alibakhsh, with a UDRP at the National Arbitration Forum.
The Respondent’s statement in full:
- Complainant does not have a valid trademark.
- Respondent has rights and legitimate interests because it has made no commercial use of the domain name and the domain name is not viewable by the general public.
- Respondent did not act in bad faith.
- Respondent did not offer to sell, he received the offer to sell—to which he asked for what he thought was fair value.
- Respondent does not believe Complainant owns the trademark and thus had no notice of trademark rights.
Clearly an attempt to reverse the facts, in this obvious cybersquatting case.
The sole panelist, Dr. Beatrice Onica Jarka, did not have to work too hard to present the facts, and ordered the domain name HuffingtonPost.XYZ to be transferred to the Complainant.
In our opinion, as much as a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking is delivered in cases involving Complainants that file an abusive UDRP, the finding of “Cybersquatting” should be tagged to any Respondent where the case is as clear cut as this one.
For the full text of the UDRP, click here.
