Dollar is a reverse domain name hijacker — The Simple
Personal Finance site tried to get shorter domain name through cybersquatting complaint.
The Simple Dollar is a website that dishes out personal finance advice. Don’t expect the site to offer domain name advice anytime soon.
Soda LLC, owner of the site, has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name SimpleDollar.com. It’s a better domain than the one the site has: TheSimpleDollar.com.
How Soda LLC’s law firm DuBois, Bryant & Campbell, LLP decided to take this case is beyond me.
The owner of SimpleDollar.com registered it in 2000. TheSimpleDollar.com website wasn’t launched until 2006.
That makes it impossible to prove the domain was registered in bad faith.
As some lawyers do, Soda’s lawyers tried to throw in the Telstra Corporation Limited v. Nuclear Marshmallows case. That case was very different from this one.
In finding reverse domain name hijacking, the World Intellectual Property Organization panel wrote:
Had Complainant considered prudently the elements of bad faith under the third element of the Policy, and done its homework regarding the Telstra case on which Complainant relied, Complainant ought to have been able to determine easily that the circumstances in this case differ fundamentally from those in Telstra, and there could be no finding of bad faith. In particular, (i) Respondent registered the Domain Name consisting of two descriptive words six years prior to Complainant’s earliest use of its unregistered THE SIMPLE DOLLAR mark, as compared to the registration of the domain name in Telstra in the face of Telstra’s pre-existing well-known TELSTRA trademark rights, and (ii) there were no indications in this case of special circumstances such as those giving rise to bad faith use in Telstra (e.g., hiding identity and using false contact details in relation to passive holding).
