Fertilizer firm tries reverse domain name hijacking
Firm intentionally provided incomplete material evidence, panel determines.
Ferm-O-Feed B.V., a fertilizer firm based in the Netherlands, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name Fertiplus.com.
The World Intellectual Property Organization panel determined that Ferm-O-Feed “provided intentionally incomplete material evidence.”
The case follows a familiar pattern found in UDRP filings:
A firm first tries to buy a domain name by reaching out to the owner (either via email or an online form). Once it receives a quote for the domain name, it then provides the quote to the panel and suggests that the domain owner reached out to it to try to sell the domain rather than just responding to an inbound request.
This matters since the Complainant is using the communications to suggest that the domain owner targeted its trademark and firm with the domain registrations.
The panel provides a whole host of reasons that the domain wasn’t registered and used in bad faith, and found that the fertilizer firm filed the case in abuse of the policy by not providing a complete picture of the communication. This, despite a warning by the domain owner’s counsel Zak Muscovitch.
Ferm-O-Feed was represented by Novagraaf Nederland B.V. [Update: a DNW reader pointed out that I’ve written regarding a number of RDNH cases in which Novagraaf was involved.]
