Company went after domain registered 14 years before it existed.
A pre-made meal company in Florida tried to reverse domain name hijack IdealNutrition.com, a UDRP panel has found.
Ideal Nutrition, LLC uses the domain IdealNutritionNow.com. It coveted the shorter domain, but that was registered by an executive chef over 14 years before Ideal Nuttion, LLC existed.
It tried to buy the domain through a broker. When that failed, it filed the UDRP.
In other words, this was a classic Plan B reverse domain name hijacking case.
The Complainant failed on both Rights and Legitimate Interests and Registered and Used in Bad Faith. It tried to argue retroactive bad faith registration.
In finding reverse domain name hijacking, the three-person panel wrote:
a) This action was taken more than 20 years after the domain name was initially acquired by the Respondent on October 30, 2002.
b) The Complainant did not have any trademark rights at the time the disputed domain name was registered. In fact, the disputed domain name was registered nearly 14 years before the Complainant alleged that it first used the Mark.
c) The Respondent never initiated contact with the Complainant to sell the domain name to the Complainant. It was the Complainant that initiated contact with the Respondent through a domain name broker. Although the Complainant was allegedly led to believe that the Respondent would sell the disputed domain name for the price that was offered by the Complainant, ultimately the offer was rejected. It was only after the Respondent rejected Complainant’s offers that it initiated this action.
d) Complainants represented by Counsel are held to a higher standard and as such should have known it could not succeed in this matter. Moreover, Complainant relies on a discredited legal theory espoused in a few cases between 2009 and 2010 on “retroactive bad faith” which does not, and has never, represented the Consensus view of UDRP Panelists.
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