Name hijacking in four letter domains case — Reverse domain

Panel stated Complainant’s representative showed an “alarming unfamiliarity with the UDRP”.

A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panel has found two Indian firms to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking. It added some especially harsh words for the Complainants’ attorney.

HSIL Limited, Somany Home Innovation Limited and SHIL Ltd., Brilloca Limited, two related firms, filed the complaint against Get On The Web Limited. They argued that the latter’s ownership of HSIL.com and SHIL.com constituted cybersquatting on their marks.

Never mind that the Respondent registered the domains ahead of the Complainants had rights to trademarks in HSIL and SHIL. And never mind that the Respondent previously used the domain names for its business.

The panel found that the Complainants failed on all three prongs of the UDRP for the domain name SHIL.com, and on the last two for HSIL.com.

The three-person WIPO panel listed five reasons the complaint was reverse domain name hijacking. Summing up the case, it wrote:

In sum, the Complainant’s professional representative betrays an alarming unfamiliarity with the UDRP and the two decades of precedent under it, to the point of counting the Registrar as a respondent merely for performing its non-discretionary function of registering an available domain name.  Such conduct in any court would result in a swift dismissal and appropriate sanctions for wasting the parties’ and the court’s time.  This Panel is limited to a find of abuse, which it readily imposes.

Manav Gupta represented the Complainants and John Berryhill represented the Respondent.