Gets another RDNH win — John Berryhill
Firm that owns TRTL.co.uk tried to get TRTL.com through UDRP.
Coolside Limited, a firm that sells a travel pillow, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking.
The firm filed a UDRP with World Intellectual Property Organization against the owner of TRTL.com. It uses the domain name TRTL.co.uk to sell its reimagined travel pillow.
TRTL.com was registered in 2000. Coolside was incorporated in 2010 and started trading under the name “trtl” in 2013.
You can see the problem with its cybersquatting complaint.
A three-person panel ruled that it was impossible the domain was registered in bad faith given the timeline. It wrote:
A modest minority of UDRP panelists has in the past attempted to construe subsequent bad faith use of a domain name as reflecting back to bad faith registration, notwithstanding no evidence of any bad faith actually operating at the date of registration. This Panel does not adhere to that theory. The UDRP policy is clear in requiring that a complainant must show both that the domain name was registered in bad faith and that it is being used in bad faith.
Even those panelists who have advocated such an interpretation of the Policy still require there to be some evidence that the domain name has been used in bad faith in a manner which indicates a change of behaviour or other specific targeting of the complainant and its rights. The Complainant has not brought any coherent evidence even of any such bad faith use in this case.
The panel cited three reasons the case was brought in abuse of the policy:
1. Coolside Limited ignored settled policy precedent around pre-trademark registration of domains, and that bad faith requires targeting.
2. The firm didn’t even try to explain why ordinary precedent shouldn’t apply.
3. The domain name owner told the complainant this ahead of time and even pointed out a previous case involving the same domain name owner with similar facts in which the domain name owner won.
Coolside was represented by Burness Paull LLP. John Berryhill represented the domain name owner.
trtl.com udrp
