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Company didn’t withdraw complaint after it was apparent the domain was owned by someone with the surname of the domain.
A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has found Machani Infra Development Corporation Private Limited to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking.
The company filed a UDRP complaint against Machani.com and failed to convince the panel of any of the three prongs required to win a cybersquatting dispute.
Most damning was that the domain name owner’s last name is Machani. While it’s plausible that the Complainant didn’t know this when it filed its dispute, it didn’t withdraw the case after finding out this information. Instead, it doubled down by trying to submit a supplemental filing that did not dispute the evidence about the family name of the Respondent but started with the statement that “The Respondent has not disputed or denied any of the submissions and contentions made in the complaint and is, therefore, deemed to have accepted the submissions and contentions made in the complaint”.
The panelist also found that the Complainant made inflated claims about trademark rights in the term Machani. In any event, the supporting evidence it submitted to purported common law rights post-dated the domain registration.
IndusLaw represented the Complainant, and Ankur Raheja of Cylaw Solutions represented the domain owner. This is the second reverse domain name hijacking finding Cylaw has won that was published today.
Post link: Indian firm tries reverse domain hijacking a common surname
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