CEAT tire firm fabricated evidence, panel determines
Panel states that tire firm submitted “clearly fabricated” evidence.
Indian tire firm CEAT (short for Cavi Elettrici e Affini Torino) has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name CEATE.com.
The firm owns the domain CEAT.com, which it won in a 2011 UDRP filing. There was one dissenting panelist in that case, Neil Anthony Brown. Brown was one of the panelists in the case for CEATE.com as well.
As stated by the World Intellectual Property Organization decision, CEAT manufactured evidence suggesting that the parked domain at CEATE.com showed ads for tires. It did this by entering “ceat tyre firm” in the search box on the parked domain.
The three-person panel found that “Complainant’s screenshots showing use the disputed domain name in connection with the Complainant’s trademark submitted as Annex 2 to the Complaint have been clearly fabricated in an attempt to create evidence of the Respondent’s bad faith.”
It found that CEAT engaged in reverse domain name hijacking.
CEAT was represented by DePenning & DePenning, which has represented a client in a reverse domain name hijacking case ahead of. The domain owner was represented by Zak Muscovitch.
