2 panelists say RDNH, other states domain name ought to be transferred

How did one panelist think a domain ought to be transferred when the other two say the case was brought in bad faith?

It’s fairly rare that a panelist files a dissenting opinion in a UDRP. Usually a three person panel comes to the same conclusion, although occasionally you’ll see a dissent.

But a recent decision treads even further into “rare” territory: 2 panelists thought the case was so egregious, it qualified at Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. A third panelist actually found in favor of the complainant.

The case pitted European giant easyGroup Limited against Hong Kong firm Easy Group Holdings Limited, which registered the domain name EasyGroup.com in 1998. The domain was registered ahead of easyGroup got any trademark rights in the name (it by now ran EasyJet, but hadn’t yet become the conglomerate it is today). The respondent runs a business with the term “easy” in it.

Two panelists found that easyGroup didn’t prove a lack of rights or legitimate interests and failed to prove the domain was registered in bad faith. The two panelists also found RDNH on the basis that the trademark rights postdated the domain name registration.

Yet one panelist, Jane Lambert, dissented. She believes that if you renew a domain name in bad faith, then you run afoul of the policy:

Even if it was possible to represent that the registration of the Domain Name would not infringe upon or otherwise violate the rights of Complainant or its subsidiary firms in 1998 it would not be possible to make such a representation now.

I really thought we were past these sorts of interpretations of UDRP, but apparently not.

Lambert appears to be the author of the book Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights.