Loses cybersquatting claim over LeanIn.com domain name — Sheryl Sandberg

Her foundation uses LeanIn.org.

The Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation has lost a cybersquatting claim it filed against the domain name LeanIn.com. The organization filed the case with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.

The Facebook Chief Operating Officer is well-known for her TED Talk and book called Lean In. Her foundation has a subsidiary called LeanIn.Org LLC.

The domain owner, Hecham Ghazal, had a business called LeanIn Inc. that purchased the domain name in July 2010. This was following Sandberg registered the domain name LeanIn.org but ahead of her TED talk and ahead of the book was published.

LeanIn Inc. was later dissolved but the firm’s owner retained the domain name.

The foundation argued that the domain name owner purchased the domain in 2015, but the owner provided evidence of his 2010 buyout of the domain for his business.

WIPO panelist John Swinson noted that the foundation provided no evidence of trademark rights predating Ghazel’s buyout of the domain name. He wrote:

The Complainant has not provided any evidence, nor has it even attempted to make any argument, as to why the Respondent knew or ought to have known of the Complainant or its future business operations in July 2010.

The foundation, therefore, could not show that the domain was registered in bad faith and it lost the case.