Tourism Corporation guilty of reverse domain name hijacking — Gold Coast
Tourism group guilty of trying to hijack domain name from Digimedia.
Gold Coast Tourism Corporation Ltd. has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a UDRP over the domain name GoldCoast.com.
The case was filed against Digimedia, which was represented by John Berryhill.
The complainant, a non-profit that promotes the Gold Cost in Australia, uses the domain name at visitgoldcoast.com.
Gold Coast Tourism alleged that Digimedia asked $1 million for the domain name, which it claimed is a “totally excessive and unreasonable payment” and that this makes the registration in bad faith.
The three person panel ruled that Gold Coast Tourism proved none of the three requirements necessary to win a UDRP. It also found that the group had attempted reverse domain name hijacking, and called the case “fatally weak”.
The Complainant engaged in exchanges with the Respondent to purchase the disputed domain name. The Complainant’s own evidence indicates that the Complainant was willing to purchase the disputed domain name for USD 10,000. In those exchanges, the Complainant made no suggestion that it considered the Respondent’s registration to have been made in bad faith, or that the Respondent was otherwise infringing the Complainant’s rights.
The panelists included James Barker, Philip Argy, and Andrew Christie. The latter panelist has historically been favorable to complainants and has argued that a respondent merely has to use a domain in bad faith – not register it in bad faith – for the complainant to prevail.
