The UDRP case regarding RVK.COM

 

  
     
 

R.V. Kuhns & Associates, Inc. represented by Tonkon Corp LLP loses UDRP case in its attempt to unfairly grab 14 year old RVK.com domain name.

WIPO Panelists stated that "...the original Complaint was not a good faith filing" and found R.V. Kuhns & Associates, Inc. guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.

  
 


Unanimously all of the three panelists agreed that the RVK.com domain name had neither been registered in bad faith nor was the RVK.com domain name being used in bad faith.

  
  The WIPO Panelists stated : "Complainant knew that Respondent registered the disputed domain name several months prior to Complainant's claimed date of first use of its mark. Complainant must therefore have been aware that Respondent cannot have registered the disputed domain name in bad faith, since he cannot possibly have known of Complainant's as-yet-nonexistent claim to the mark."  
 


"The Complaint does not allege or show that the Complainant used the alleged RVK mark (hereinafter the “alleged RVK Mark”) in any fashion at the time of registration of the Domain Name in 2002 or for nine years thereafter. Unquestionably the Complainant had no registered or unregistered rights in a RVK trademark at the time of registration of the Domain Name of which the Complainant could have been aware of or upon which he could have intended to capitalize.

R.V. Kuhns & Associates, Inc. represented by Portland Oregon based Tonkon Corp LLP had their complaint denied by WIPO the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

The WIPO ruling on the case (R.V. Kuhns & Associates, Inc. v. Gregory Ricks / Whois Privacy Corp. / Domain Administrator) can be found at WIPO Case No.: D2014-2041


  
 

The panelists' concluding paragraph sums up by saying:

"the Panel finds that Complainant engaged in Reverse Domain name hijacking;"


  
 
 
 

There are news stories about the RVK.com domain name UDRP case on TheDomains.com "UDRP filed on three letter domain RVK.com" and on DomainNameWire.com "Investment firm RVK engaged in Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on RVK.com".

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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