Citadel ought to have sent an email rather than filing a UDRP

Investment firm might have achieved its desired result by sending an email. Instead, it lost a UDRP.

Fund manager Citadel Enterprise Americas LLC lost a UDRP it filed against the domain name citadel-investment.com, and it’s a lesson in determining the best approach to go following a potentially infringing domain name.

A firm in Oman registered the domain name in August 2018. Citadel was concerned that it would be used in an infringing way since of the inclusion of ‘investment’ in the domain. That’s understandable.

It turns out that the registrant registered the domain name on behalf of its client Citadel Investment LLC, which was founded in 2004 and holds a commercial license issued in that name by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in Oman.

Given the short timeframe and the explanation for registration, the National Arbitration Forum panel denied the claim since Citadel Enterprise Americas did not show that the domain was registered in bad faith.

Here’s the kicker: in its response, the domain owner offered to transfer the domain to the Complainant for its out-of-pocket costs.

This seems like a case in which the Complainant would have been better off sending an email to the domain owner ahead of filing a UDRP. The domain is registered at GoDaddy and has a public Whois record, so it would have been easy to contact the owner.

Now the firm wasted money on a UDRP and still doesn’t have the domain.