Live Earth Charged with Reverse Domain Name Hijacking: Eco Spat
Environmental awareness firm busted for “glaring example” of reverse domain name hijacking.
A for profit eco awareness and fundraising firm that associates itself with Al Gore has lost a domain name dispute and been charged with reverse domain name hijacking.
Live Earth, LLC, which organizes concerts, runs, and other events to raise money and awareness for environmental issues, filed an arbitration case with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name LiveEarth.com. The firm uses LiveEarth.org as its main web site.
But the firm had no chance of winning. LiveEarth.com was registered in 1998, almost a decade ahead of Live Earth, LLC started operating. The registrant of the .com also had clear rights or legitimate interests in the name, since he was part of a group called Live Earth Trust.
Live Earth, LLC attempted to purchase the domain name and offered $50,000, which the domain owner refused. Hence the arbitration filing.
In finding that Live Earth, LLC committed a “glaring example” of reverse domain name hijacking, the arbitration panel wrote:
In this case, evidence of Complainant’s bad faith use of the Policy abounds. With the benefit of counsel, Complainant initiated this proceeding based upon a common law claim to trademark rights that is tenuous at best. Moreover, Complainant’s filings have ignored the applicability of Policy paragraph 4(c)(ii), which makes it painfully obvious that Respondent has rights and legitimate interests in the disputed domain name by virtue of Respondent’s founding and operation of an organization with almost exactly the same name. Also, those filings have completely disregarded the fact that registration of the disputed domain name predated any claim to Complainant’s ownership of stated trademark rights by regarding nine years, which makes it even more painfully obvious that the disputed domain name was not registered in bad faith relative to Complainant.
