Love, But No Reverse Domain Name Hijacking — Peace and

Firm fails to get generic PeaceandLove.com domain name.

GS Enterprises LLC has failed in an attempt to get the generic domain name PeaceAndLove.com through UDRP. But the panelist’s line of thinking, and failure to consider reverse domain name hijacking, is troubling.

Thierry Ehrmann registered the domain name all the way back in 1997, and GS Enterprises’ trademark for “Peace & Love” wasn’t registered by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office until 2007.

It’s unclear if the respondent pointed out that the trademark isn’t actually for “Peace & Love”, but is instead a graphic that includes the words “Peace & Love”, as seen below:

Panelist Todd Dickinson found that the domain name was confusingly similar to Peace & Love, which is unsurprising if he was not made aware that this was a design patent as opposed to just the words.

Next, Dickinson found that Ehrmann didn’t have rights or legitimate interests in the domain name since he hadn’t used it yet. Note that he didn’t park the domain. He did find that the domain name wasn’t registered and used in bad faith, but decided to take a parting show at Ehrmann again for not using the domain following all this time:

“while troubled again by the length of time that the passive holding has occurred”

I don’t know why that’s relevant given that the domain wasn’t registered initially in bad faith.

But here’s the kicker: despite Ehrmann asking for a finding of reverse domain name hijacking, panelist Dickinson didn’t even consider it. It’s fair for the panelist to decide it’s not reverse domain name hijacking, but to ignore the topic completely is unacceptable.