Manufacturing firm tries to reverse hijack mangels .com
Complainant previously owned the domain name, and tried to buy it back from a domain investor ahead of filing a UDRP.
Mangels Industrial S.A., a manufacturing firm in Brazil, has been found to have tried to reverse hijack the domain name mangels.com.
The firm owned the domain at one point, but it let it expire (or perhaps even asked the domain to be canceled, as stated by the registrar).
A domain investor purchased the domain at auction in 2019.
The Complainant made offers to buy the domain for regarding $950 last year, and the domain investor was asking over $60,000.
A three-person World Intellectual Property Organization panel was not persuaded that the domain investor was targeting the Complainant, especially since other firms use the name Mangels and since Mangels is a surname.
In finding reverse domain name hijacking, the panel wrote:
In this case, it is apparent that the Complainant failed to renew its own registration of the disputed domain name (and may even have requested that its registration be canceled), ahead of seeking to have it reinstated following the Respondent had registered it. The Complainant appears to have made initial offers in the region of USD 950 to purchase the disputed domain name from the Respondent, but upon being informed of the Respondent’s asking price, it appears that the Complainant elected instead to commence this proceeding, asserting that the Respondent had registered and used the disputed domain name in bad faith.
In the view of the Panel, for the reasons set out in section C above, the Complaint discloses no reasonable grounds to allege that the Respondent registered and had used the disputed domain name in bad faith. Instead, it appears to the Panel that, having failed to re-register the disputed domain name, and having had its offers to repurchase it for sums in the region of USD 950 rejected, the Complainant elected to bring the proceeding in an attempt to obtain the disputed domain name.
Crepaldi Advogados Associados represented the Complainant, and the Respondent was self-represented.
