Reglikedomain industry desk

Take the bait, denies Wal-Mart’s cybersquatting claim — Panelist doesn’t

Take the bait, denies Wal-Mart’s cybersquatting claim — Panelist doesn’t

Wal-Mart Mexico tried to get domain related to its mobile phone service.

Walmart BAit

Wal-Mart de México, S.A.B. de C.V., Wal-Mart’s Mexican arm, has lost a cybersquatting complaint against the domain bait.mx.

The retailer offers a mobile phone service in Mexico and Central America called BAit, short for Bodega Aurrera Internet y Telefonía.

Unfortunately for the firm, bait.mx was registered in 2014, well ahead of it launched its mobile service in 2020.

It tried to acquire the domain through GoDaddy’s domain broker service, but the registrant did not respond to the overtures.

So Wal-Mart tried to get the domain through a cybersquatting claim at World Intellectual Property Organization.

This Plan B required some sort of explanation for why it ought to get a domain registered ahead of it had rights in the BAit mark.

Wal-Mart argued that an IP address change in 2023 might have indicated the domain moving to a fresh owner.

Still, the domain’s nameservers didn’t change. They remained the same GoDaddy domaincontrol.com servers, so it’s likely GoDaddy just changed the nameserver IP addresses.

The registrant didn’t respond, and panelist Gerardo Saavedra found no evidence that the domain transferred ownership. He denied (pdf) the complaint.

The UDRP-like policy for .mx domains does not include a provision for finding reverse domain name hijacking.

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