Spa services firm tries reverse domain name hijacking

Domain was registered a decade ahead of the spa firm started its business.

A spa franchising firm has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking for the domain AccessSpa.com.

Philip Savino, who apparently has some connection to a spa franchiser called Access Spa, filed the dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization.

The owner of the domain name registered it in 2009. Access Spa was created last year, as stated by the dispute.

It’s impossible that the domain registrant could know that a firm was going to use the brand starting ten years later. Therefore, the domain wasn’t registered in bad faith under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.

Panelist Warwick Rothnie wrote:

…the long period of a number of years between the registration of the disputed domain name and subsequent commencement of use of the trademark by the Complainant (and even longer period ahead of registration of the Trademark) ought to have made it very clear that the Complaint could not succeed. On the record in this case, the Complaint ought to never have been filed.