Developer tries to reverse hijack domain name — Hudson’s Detroit
Firm filed cybersquatting complaint against domain registered well ahead of it had trademark rights in the term Hudson’s Detroit.
Bedrock Management Services, LLC has been found to have tried reverse hijacking the domain name HudsonsDetroit.com.
The firm developed Hudson’s Detroit, a mixed-use property on the site of the former J.L. Hudson Department Store.
Bedrock uses the domain name Hudsons-Detroit.com for the property’s website. That gives the firm a good reason to covet the unhyphenated version of the domain.
But a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) panelist ruled that the firm filed a case against the owner of HudsonsDetroit.com in bad faith.
Hassan Kadouh registered the domain name in February 2015. He stated he registered it as an homage to the J.L. Hudson department store where his grandmother worked her entire career, in connection with a studio located in a former Hudson Motor Car Firm service facility, and following his son, Hudson, with whom he lives in Detroit.
Despite this history, Bedrock alleged that the domain wasn’t registered until February 2026. Bedrock and its attorney, Staci R. DeRegnaucourt of Varnum LLP, apparently referred to the last update date on the Whois record as the registration date. It didn’t correct this in its amended complaint.
Historical Whois records bear out Kadouh’s version of events.
Given the chronology, this case was dead on arrival. Bedrock could not show that Kadouh registered the domain in bad faith to target Bedrock years ahead of Bedrock had any trademark rights in the term.
Panelist David L. Kreider wrote:
The Panel considers that [a reverse domain name hijacking finding] is warranted, for three reasons.
First, the Complaint’s central factual assertion was contradicted by Complainant’s own evidence. As the Panel has found, the February 6, 2026 registration date pleaded in both the Complaint and the Amended Complaint is the date on which the WHOIS record was last updated, and the creation date of February 5, 2015 appears on the line immediately below it on the printout Complainant itself filed. The chronology on which Complainant’s bad faith case depended was thus inverted, and the material correcting it was in Complainant’s own hands from the outset.
Second, Complainant repeated the assertion following receiving the Registrar’s verification. Forum transmitted that verification, which independently gives the creation date, to Complainant with its deficiency letter of August 19, 2026, and Complainant amended the Complaint in response to that letter. The amendment corrected Respondent’s identity and left the registration date as it stood.
Third, Complainant was represented throughout by trademark counsel. A represented complainant is expected to establish the registration date of the domain name it seeks and to address, rather than pass over, a registration that, as the Panel has found, predates every right Complainant asserts. The Complaint does not mention the point, and it advances no basis upon which bad faith registration could have been found.
The Panel makes no finding as to the merits of any grievance Complainant may have regarding the Parties’ concurrent use of similar names; that is a trademark question, and nothing in this Decision determines it. What the Panel finds is that this proceeding was not an available route to the relief Complainant sought, on facts Complainant knew or ought to have known, and that the Complaint was pressed nonetheless.
The Panel accordingly finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith, and that it constitutes Reverse Domain Name Hijacking within the meaning of Paragraph 15(e) of the Rules and an abuse of the administrative proceeding.
