French human resources consulting firm attempts reverse domain name hijacking

Firm goes following domain registered well ahead of it adopted the matching brand name.

NOOUS, SAS, a French human resources consulting firm, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

The firm filed a cybersquatting claim against the domain noous.com.

Noous.com was registered well ahead of the consulting firm changed its name to NOOUS in 2020.

It didn’t address this timeline issue in its complaint. Instead, it argued:

The disputed domain name has not been used for years and its mere retention is intended to prevent the Complainant from reflecting its trademark in a corresponding domain name, in the popular and neutral extension “.com”. The fact that the Complainant uses an identity anonymization service, combined with the fact that the disputed domain name has not been effectively exploited for many years and the impossibility for the Complainant to contact the registrant despite its efforts, constitute a set of factors revealing the bad faith surrounding the maintenance of this registration. Obviously, the Respondent continues to renew the disputed domain name solely to prevent the Complainant from holding this strategic domain name. People who visit the website associated with the disputed domain name looking for the Complainant may have the impression that the Complainant has a problem with its website, which harms its brand and image.

Not owning the .com could indeed be a problem for NOOUS, but that’s not the domain registrant’s problem.

World Intellectual Property Organization panelist Matthew Kennedy determined that this was a case of reverse domain name hijacking. He wrote:

The Panel notes that the Complainant has legal representation in this proceeding. The Complainant knew that the disputed domain name was registered many years ahead of it purchased trademark rights. The Complainant did not argue that the Respondent could or ought to have been aware of the existence of itself or its mark at the time of registration of the disputed domain name, declining to mention in the body of the Complaint the year in which its trademark was registered. It claimed that the Respondent hides behind anonymity and that this alone demonstrates bad faith, yet domain name registrant data is widely anonymized to comply with privacy regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. While the Complainant may feel aggrieved by instances of actual confusion between the disputed domain name and its own domain name (although it provides no evidence of any such instances), it must have known that its Complaint could not succeed on the element of bad faith as regards registration, which is an essential requirement of the UDRP. Despite this, it pursued its Complaint, putting the Respondent to time and effort to defend himself.

Morvilliers Sentenac & Associés represented the complainant. The domain owner was self-represented.