The UDRP case regarding IUNO.COM

 
   
 

IUNO Advokatpartnerselskab of Copenhagen, Denmark, represented by Anders Etgen Reitz, Denmark loses UDRP case in its attempt to unfairly grab 11 year old IUNO.com domain name.

WIPO Panelist calls it a "Baseless Complaint" and found Denmark lawfirm IUNO Advokatpartnerselskab guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
 


The panelist found that the IUNO.com domain name had neither been registered in bad faith nor was the IUNO.com domain name being used in bad faith.
  The WIPO Panelist stated : "... the Panel finds it astonishing that a law firm could produce such a fundamentally flawed Complaint"
  and:
 

"In formulating the Complaint the Complainant has fallen into serious error.

The Complainant appears to have taken the view that registering a domain name for the purpose of selling it is of itself in some way reprehensible, when of course it is not (at least absent an intent to sell the owner of an identical or confusingly similar trademark, or a competitor thereof). There is a lawful trade in domain names running into millions of dollars per annum. If the Panel has understood the Complainant’s evidence correctly, it appears that when the Complainant attempted to purchase the Domain Name online, the price demanded for the Domain Name increased from about USD 10,000 to USD 50,000. No doubt, when the Complainant disclosed its identity, the Respondent appreciated that a higher sum could be demanded of an entity having a name identical to the Domain Name. Whatever the reason, there is nothing to demonstrate that this is behaviour meriting a finding of bad faith under the Policy. Pricing a domain name at the highest level the registrant believes it can encourage a purchaser to pay is not of itself objectionable absent evidence of targeting a particular trademark owner."

IUNO Advokatpartnerselskab represented by Anders Etgen Reitz had their complaint denied by WIPO the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

The WIPO ruling on the case (IUNO Advokatpartnerselskab v. Angela Croom) can be found at WIPO Case No.: D2011-0805
   
 

The panelist's concluding paragraph sums up by saying:

"..the Panel recognizes that in many cases a complainant cannot know what the respondent’s true intentions were at time of registration of the domain name in issue and that to an extent allegations of bad faith may be somewhat speculative in those cases. However, that is not this case. In this case the Complainant knew or ought to have known that the bad faith allegations were baseless."


  
 
 

There are news stories about the IUNO.com domain name UDRP case on DomainNameWire.com "Law Firm Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking After Filing Astonishing Case".

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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