Processor maker tries reverse domain name hijacking — Thermomix food
Firm’s cybersquatting complaint blends in irrelevant arguments.
Vorwerk International AG, maker of the Thermomix line of food processors, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking (pdf).
The firm filed a cybersquatting dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization against the domain name TM7.com. Vorwerk is releasing the latest Thermomix product, dubbed the TM7, later this year.
Although Thermomix has a history of naming its products as ‘TM’ followed by a number, that wasn’t the case when TM7.com was registered in 2001. At that point, the firm had only released the TM21. Its next product, released in 2004, was the TM31.
Thus, it seems highly unlikely that someone would have registered TM7.com in 2001 with the anticipation that Thermomix would change its naming structure to the single digits and release the TM7 24 years later.
Attorney John Berryhill, who represented the Chinese domain registrant, noted that Vorwerk’s filing had references to things that didn’t apply in this case:
Whether bizarrely fictional allegations are inadvertently made through inept use of copypasta or AI, UDRP complainants do not have a right to inflict this sort of time-wasting exercise of weeding out irrelevant marks and nonsense allegations, on UDRP panelists working well below their hourly rate to provide a community service.
On this issue, the panel noted:
Notwithstanding this, at the very least the Complaint has not been prepared with the care that it ought to have been. In this respect the Panel has by now mentioned (a) the Complainant’s unintelligible claims by reference to Oki Data test as well as to the THERMOMIX and VORWERK marks, and (b) the unsubstantiated allegation that the Domain Name has been used in respect of products that compete with the Complainant. Why this has happened is not entirely clear. The Respondent suggestion that this is a result of the “inept use” of copy and paste from submissions in earlier UDRP complaints strikes the Panel as a plausible explanation. It is also the Panel’s sad experience that complaints are too often delegated to junior lawyers whose work is inadequately supervised. But whatever the cause, the lack of care with which the Complaint has been prepared reflects poorly on the Complainant’s legal advisers.
Moeller IP & Co S.A. represented Vorwerk.
The three-person panel ruled in favor of the registrant on the issue of registration and use in bad faith. It also found reverse domain name hijacking.
