Brazil firm guilty of reverse domain name hijacking

Firm went following the .com version of its country code domain name.

A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has found a firm in Brazil guilty of reverse domain name hijacking despite the owner of the domain name not responding to the UDRP.

Panelist Wilson Pinheiro Jabur made the finding against 2XT Tecnologia e Comercio de Informática Ltda, which owns the domain name passagenspromo.com.br. The firm filed the case against the matching .com domain, passagenspromo.com.

The domain was registered in 2013 ahead of the Complainant started using the mark. The domain means “promo tickets” in Portuguese.

The Complainant characterized the domain as typosquatting and argued that the registrant intended to sell it to the highest bidder given that it did not take any steps to acquire trademark rights over the term.

Historical Whois records can’t confirm the original registrant of the domain due to Whois privacy but the domain has always been registered at PublicDomainRegistry.

The Complainant basically agreed that it was registered in 2013, which is fatal to its case. In finding reverse domain name hijacking, the panelist wrote:

In the present case, the Panel considers that the Complainant has been guilty of RDNH due to the fact that it has failed by a sizable margin, since the Complainant knew or at least ought to have known that it did not possess enough evidence to prove at least one of the essential elements contained in paragraph 4(a) of the Policy.

The Complainant’s representative quoted UDRP case law and the Panel thinks it is unlikely that he was unaware of (i) the consensus set forth in section 3.8 of the WIPO Overview 3.0; and (ii) the current overwhelming view of UDRP panelists as to the need to prove registration and use in bad faith.