Reverse domain name hijacking over Amexio .com — Panel finds

Panel determined that the Complainants tried to mislead it.

A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has found that Michelios 3 and AmeXio of France tried to reverse hijack the domain name amexio.com.

The parties filed the dispute against eWeb Development Inc. of Canada.

eWeb Development Inc. offers aftermarket domain names and web development solutions. It has registered a lot of domains similar to amexio.com and appears to register many brandable domains.

The Complainants’ case had a number of fatal flaws. While one of the firms had filed a trademark by the time the domain was registered, the mark had not been registered yet (it had only been applied for). The panel felt it was misled on this point and also noted that the Complainant did not provide any evidence of using the trademark prior to filing the application.

Another mistake was to mislead the panel regarding an offer eWeb Development Inc. made to sell the domain. The offer was in response to the Complainants’ inquiry, yet it couched it as the other way around:

The Complaint also misleadingly asserts that the disputed domain name “was proposed to be sold to the complainant” without mentioning that the offer was solicited by the Complainant and cropping the annexed screenshot just above the text indicating that the offer was prepared in response to the Complainant’s quote request (which is visible in the uncropped version annexed to the Response).

Panels don’t like being misled, and the three-person panel found (pdf) “Plan B” reverse domain name hijacking (filing a UDRP following first attempting to buy the domain).

Legal In Motion (LEGALiM) represented the Complainants, and Muscovitch Law P.C. represented the domain name owner.