Wins UDRP, court case still pending — UDRPSearch owner
Panel rules against firm that claimed FastTrak.com was cybersquatting against it.
A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has ruled in favor of Virtual Point in a UDRP over the domain name FastTrak.com. Virtual Point has common ownership with UDRPSearch.com, a search engine for UDRP cases.
The panelist ruled that the domain name could not have been registered in bad faith since the domain was registered prior to the complainant’s use of the mark FastTrak.
Still, the panelist declined to find reverse domain name hijacking. The panelist pointed out that the complainant, FastTrak of Clermont, Florida, was not represented by counsel. Panelist Evan Brown stated he would “attribute the decision to file the action to a lack of robust understanding, rather than bad faith.”
Although he did not say it, I suspect the decision to not find reverse domain name hijacking was also influenced by a lawsuit Virtual Point filed against FastTrak for reverse domain name hijacking. It’s possible that Brown didn’t want to decide the issue since it was by now in front of a court. Granted, he could have also decided to not continue to hear the UDRP case following the lawsuit was filed.
