Real estate broker files cybersquatting claim with bogus citations: RDNH

Panel blasts Complainant for multiple supplemental filings and fake citations.

A real estate broker in Virginia attempted to reverse hijack the domain name UpscaleAvenues.com, a UDRP panelist has ruled (pdf).

Victor Adam Bosak III filed the dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization against Robert Rogers, a former business partner.

Rogers registered the domain name in 2018 on the same date he registered the firm Upscale Ventures, LLC in Virginia. The parties signed a trademark co-ownership agreement the following year.

Bosak filed the case without a lawyer. It’s not clear whether he used artificial intelligence to make his claims, but he cited many fictional prior UDRP cases. Other cases he cited existed, but they involved different parties than those cited or did not bolster his claims.

In finding reverse domain name hijacking, panelist Robert A. Badgley wrote:

Complainant cited a number of nonexistent cases to the Panel in support of its case. Complainant also cited a number of actual cases that do not stand for the proposition for which they were cited. If there was one errant citation or something that could be chalked up to momentary carelessness, the Panel might be disposed to overlook the error. But the sheer quantity of fake case citations compels something more than a shrug. The Panel is mindful of some recent instances where lawyers have been caught citing fake cases to courts of law in the United States, and in these instances it has been claimed that Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) programs were used by the lawyers, and the work product thereby obtained was rife with so-called AI hallucinations. Perhaps that is what happened here. Assuming so would be the most charitable interpretation the Panel could place on Complainant’s submissions to the Panel. Even if this were the explanation, the Panel would still condemn the decision to submit what Complainant submitted without doing some measure of verification that the cases cited were actually genuine and stood for the propositions advanced by Complainant in aid if its case. The failure to perform such due diligence (which, again, is the most innocuous construction the Panel can assign to these circumstances), and the resulting suite of massive and misleading errors in the materials submitted here for consideration, cannot be countenanced.

Additionally, Bosak filed five unsolicited supplemental filings ahead of the Respondent even replied to the case, which Badgley stated was “improper and borders on abusive.”

The panelist also chastised Bosak for filing an “exceedingly shaky” case given the parties’ history and trademark co-ownership agreement.

John Berryhill represented the domain name owner.