Nordic healthcare firm files dead-on-arrival cybersquatting claim
Firm goes following domain registered nine years ahead of it started using its brand name.
Timik Group, a healthcare firm in Sweden and Norway, has lost a cybersquatting claim it filed against the domain Timik.com.
The case was dead one arrival: Timik began using the name in 2017 but the registrant of the domain has owned it since 2008. Thus, it was impossible to show that the Respondent registered the domain name to target the Complainant’s non-existent trademark.
The domain owner, who lives in South Korea, asked for the case to be decided in Korean. Panelist Andrew J. Park is proficient in both English (what the case was filed in) and Korean. So he decided he’d accept the complaint in English and the response in Korean. I’m not sure how that helps the domain registrant who probably wouldn’t understand the complaint, nor the Complainant who would have to consider making a supplemental filing in response to a Korean-language response.
In the end, the domain owner didn’t respond to the Complainant’s contentions.
Still, Park noted that the domain wasn’t registered in bad faith.
He didn’t consider if this was a case of reverse domain name hijacking. It appears to be a classic “Plan B” reverse domain name hijacking. Timik Group offered to buy the domain for $4,000. When the owner asked for $85,000, it filed the UDRP.
