YPlan, Inc. (“Complainant”), represented by Eugene Rome of Rome & Associates, A.P.C., of California, was just found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name yplan.com by a one member UDRP panel of Antonina Pakharenko-Anderson
Talk about a slam dunk case.
The Complainant which says its the “creator of the well-known and famous application based or mobile app based service called YPLAN”, alleged its rights in the YPLAN mark date back to 2012 based on the registration of the word mark YPLAN in the United Kingdom, and in the US, however the company was not even formed until January 30, 2013.
The domain holder registered the domain name yplan.com back in 2001.
Duh.
“”In the present case, the domain name was registered in 2001. The earliest date of any registration or use of the mark relied upon in the Complaint was in 2012.
In view of this, the registration of the domain name could not have been in bad faith on any interpretation of the facts and cases cited in the Complaint.
Normally speaking, when a domain name is registered before a trademark right is established, the registration of the domain name was not in bad faith because the registrant could not have contemplated the complainant’s non-existent right.”
Furthermore, on this point the UDRP reflects a widely applied principle of trademark and other laws, that priority generally prevails.
Complainant should have realized that there was no way to prevail on this Complaint.
Under these circumstances, the Panel finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith primarily to deprive a registered domain-name holder of a domain name and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.”
