Panel finds chemicals company didn’t meet any of its burdens to prevail in a UDRP.
A Czech Arbitration Court panel has concluded that Advanced ChemBlocks Inc. attempted reverse domain name hijacking with its complaint over the domain aablocks.com.
The domain in dispute is used by a competitor, AA Blocks LLC. The term “blocks” is commonly used in the chemicals industry to describe products and product components, and the panel found this descriptive use important to the decision.
After reviewing the record, the panel held that the complainant failed to satisfy any of the three required elements under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP): registration and use in bad faith, lack of rights or legitimate interests, and registration predating the complainant’s trademark rights.
Advanced ChemBlocks presented several arguments the panel found unpersuasive. In a supplemental submission the complainant pointed out that AA Blocks purchased products from Advanced ChemBlocks in 2019 and suggested that this showed the respondent knew about the complainant when the domain was registered. The panel noted, however, that the respondent registered the aablocks.com domain in 2017, two years before those purchases took place.
The panel identified multiple factors supporting a finding of reverse domain name hijacking. Among them were the complainant’s trademark registration, which postdates the domain registration and contains an express disclaimer for the relevant word elements, and widespread evidence that “blocks” is used descriptively across the industry. The panel also criticized several strained arguments in the complaint, such as claims of “striking similarity” between the parties’ websites when the similarities relied largely on generic website language, common structural elements, and ordinary conventions like email addresses containing “@sales”.
In the circumstances of the present case, the Panel finds that the Complaint constitutes Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
The cumulative effect of several factors supports such a conclusion.
In particular, the Complainant’s registered Trademark postdates the registration of the disputed domain name, while the trademark registration itself contains an express disclaimer regarding the relevant word elements. The record further demonstrates widespread descriptive use of the term “blocks” – the only term of the Complainant’s Trademark used in the domain name – within the relevant industry, a circumstance acknowledged by the Complainant’s own evidence and declaration. The Panel also considers that several of the Complainant’s arguments were strained in nature, including the alleged “striking similarity” between the parties’ websites based largely on commonplace website terminology, generic structural elements, or ordinary conventions such as the use of email addresses containing “@sales”.
The Panel finds that the professionally represented Complainant should have appreciated that it could not succeed under any fair interpretation of facts reasonably available prior to the filing of the Complaint, including information on the Respondent’s website indicating Respondent’s legitimate interests as a bona fide business owner, and the professionally represented Complainant unreasonably ignored established Policy precedents, including established case law and consensus views expressed in WIPO Overview 3.1.
The fact that the parties operate in the same sector and appear to be commercial competitors further suggests that the present dispute is more akin to a business or trademark dispute than a clear case of cybersquatting within the intended scope of the UDRP.
The Panel further notes that the Complaint was accompanied by more than 200 annexes, in addition to further annexes submitted with the supplemental filing, many of which were cumulative or of limited relevance to the issues requiring determination under the Policy.
While parties are entitled to substantiate their claims, the volume and nature of the materials submitted by the professionally represented Complainant in the present case are difficult to reconcile with the streamlined and summary character of UDRP proceedings, which are intended to provide an efficient mechanism for resolving clear cases of cybersquatting.
In light of the above, the Panel finds that the Complaint constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding and amounts to Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
The panel also observed that evidence on the respondent’s website supported a legitimate business interest in the domain, undermining the complainant’s assertion of bad-faith registration and use. Given these circumstances, and the fact that the trademark postdates the domain registration, the panel concluded the complaint amounted to an abuse of the UDRP process rather than a bona fide cybersquatting claim.
Dimov Internet Law Consulting represented Advanced ChemBlocks, while ESQwire.com acted for the owner of aablocks.com. The panel’s ruling reinforces that UDRP complaints must be based on a clear legal foundation and that submitting excessive or marginal evidence, or relying on strained arguments, can lead to a finding of reverse domain name hijacking.