The UDRP case regarding BOOKED.COM

 
   
 

Booked Limited, London, UK loses UDRP case in its attempt to unfairly grab 15 year old BOOKED.com domain name.

WIPO Panelists found Booked Limited guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
 


The panelists found that the BOOKED.com domain name had neither been registered in bad faith nor was the BOOKED.com domain name being used in bad faith.
 

The WIPO Panelists stated :
 


"Generally speaking, although a trademark can form a basis for a UDRP action under the first element irrespective of its date…, when a domain name is registered by the respondent before the complainant's relied-upon trademark right is shown to have been first established (whether on a registered or unregistered basis), the registration of the domain name would not have been in bad faith because the registrant could not have contemplated the complainant's then non-existent right." The Panel concludes that is precisely the situation in the present case. ."

Booked Limited had their complaint denied by WIPO the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

The WIPO ruling on the case (Booked Ltd v. Privacydotlink Customer 251836 / Dominic Hulewicz) can be found at WIPO Case No.: D2014-1937
   
 

The panelist's concluding paragraphs sums up by saying:

"In the view of the Panel this is a Complaint which should never have been launched."

and

"The Panel accepts that the Complainant and its officers are not experts in the UDRP process but at least one of those officers is a qualified attorney and it is clear to the Panel that considerable thought and effort have been devoted by the Complainant to preparing its Complaint. That should have resulted in the Complainant appreciating that it was commencing a proceeding that had no reasonable prospect of success. The Respondent should not have been put to the time, trouble and cost of having to defend this Complaint."

and

"Accordingly the Panel finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding."


  
 
 

There are news stories about the BOOKED.com domain name UDRP case on TheDomains.com "Poster Boy For Frivolous UDRP Cases".

There are numerous sources for "Reverse Domain Name Hijacking".  Amongst these are RDNH.com and HallOfShame.com (which includes a current list of those found guilty of trying to Reverse Hijack a Domain Name in which they had no legal rights. In other words they tried to bully the rightful owners into relinquishing their property and forcing these innocent parties to spend thousands to defend what they already own).

See also Does the UDRP do more harm than good? and The UDRP: A Problem at the Core of the Internet

 

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