Rocket ship firm tries Plan B reverse domain name hijacking

Firm went following domain registered ahead of it existed.

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

The firm, which launches satellites, filed a cybersquatting complaint against rocketlab.com, which is owned by RocketLab Inc. RocketLab Inc. registered the domain name well ahead of Rocket Lab USA existed, making this case dead on arrival. It would be impossible to prove that the domain was registered to target the Complainant.

The three-person UDRP panel determined this was a case of reverse domain name hijacking for four reasons:

i) Complainant, who is represented by a lawyer, ought to have appreciated the weakness of its case in view of the fact that the rocketlab.com domain name was registered long ahead of Complainant purchased trademark rights in the ROCKET LAB mark and many years ahead of Complainant was founded;

ii) the Complainant’s case appears to be based on the argument that Respondent’s failure to use the rocketlab.com domain name in connection with an active website amounts to bad faith. The Panel finds that Complainant ought to have contemplated that it could not succeed with such an argument since there is no evidence that Respondent ever targeted Complainant;

iii) Complainant ought to have known that Respondent’s use of the domain name for its email correspondence qualifies as using the domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services; and

iv) the circumstances of the case clearly show that the Complaint was filed as a “Plan B” following Complainant’s failure to purchase the disputed domain name from the Respondent.

McAndrews Held & Malloy Ltd. represented the Complainant.