A Finnish company Valio Oy, also doing business as Valio Ltd has just been found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) against Telepathy on the domain name LGG.com by a UDRP panel
The decision was handed down by the Online ADR Center of the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC).
The domain name was registered on February 10, 1998.
The panel found:
“The Complaint is a blatant exercise in Reverse Domain Name Hijacking and Respondent should not have been put to the burden and expense of responding to it. Complainant’s representative in this dispute initiated negotiations, disclaimed any legal rights to the Disputed Domain, and now is attempting to use Respondent’s offer to sell, made on the basis of Complainant’s misrepresentation, as evidence in the present dispute. A cursory review of other UDRP decisions involving Respondent would have demonstrated to Complainant that other UDRP panels found no bad faith in disputes brought with very similar facts.”
“Because Complainant has brought forth a case with no basis, and which it knew or should have known had no basis, the Panel should find that Complainant has abused the proceedings and, accordingly, issue a decision finding that Complainant has engaged in reverse domain name hijacking.”
Valio is international company, established in 1905 and has been present in the market of the United States since the year 1958. Valio’s LGG products are sold around the world through more than 20 licensing partners.
Valio is the owner of trademark registrations for the trademark LGG in over 100 countries globally, including in the United States.
So this is no mom and pop operation.
Telepathy offered to sell the domain name for $175,000 and instead Valio bought this action.
A fun fact I learned from the decision is that Nat Cohen Telepathy’s owns over 1,000 three-letter dot-com domains, which it believes makes it the world’s largest holder of premium three-letter dot-com domains.
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