Firm ordered to pay $5,000 following reverse domain name hijacking charge

Panel believe complainant was trying to use arbitration as a “short cut” to acquire domain.

Domain name attorney Zak Muscovitch has helped the owner of ClevelandCyclewerks.ca save his domain name in a cybersquatting arbitration case. Not only that, but the arbitration panel found the complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking and ordered it to pay $5,000.

.ca disputes are subject to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (CDRP). Although rare, panels can levy fines against complainants for reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH) under the CDRP. This differs from the standard UDRP that applies to .com and many other top level domains. In UDRP there’s no monetary penalty for RDNH.

The panel wrote that “there is a very strong suggestion that the Complainant has sought to use this process as a short cut to acquire the Domain Name”.

This isn’t the first time Muscovitch has won an award in a CDRP case. In fact, he represented the respondent in the first such case in which a penalty was levied.