Is a reverse domain name hijacker — EyeTube.net owner
John Berryhill gets another RDNH win.
Bryn Mawr Communications, the firm that runs ophthalmology site EyeTube.net, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name EyeTube.com.
This case follows a familiar pattern: firm comes up with a name for a site following the .com is by now registered, tries to buy the .com but fails to get the price it wants, then files a UDRP.
Bryn Mawr Communications also played some dirty tricks in its filing. It neglected to discuss its prior attempts to buy the domain, and also manipulated the parked page at EyeTube.net to try to deceive the panel.
The panel wrote:
Complainant essentially admitted as much when it acknowledged in the Complaint that Respondent had registered the Disputed Domain Name a number of years prior to Claimant’s registration or use of the marks. As further evidence of Complainant’s bad faith, the Panel considers that Complainant must have known at the time that it registered its eyetube.net, eyetube.org, and eyetube.info domain names that the eyetube.com domain name was being used by Respondent and might never be available to Complainant; that at least three individuals employed by Complainant initiated communications with Respondent’s broker regarding the purchase of the Disputed Domain Name between May 2011 and July 2015; that at no time over the course of those four years did Complainant make any claim of right, reference any trade or service mark, or suggest it was seeking to settle a legal claim of any kind; that Complainant filed its Complaint only following it failed to negotiate a sale of the Disputed Domain Name; that the Complaint failed to make any mention of these pre-suit communications; and that Complainant misleadingly indicated to the Panel that the Disputed Domain Name contained an advertisement related to Complainant’s business, when the advertisement at issue was generated through Complainant’s own use of the Disputed Domain Name’s search function and had no relation to the educational services offered by Complainant.
The complainant was represented Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP.
eyetube.com
