Panel says “UDRP Veterans” know what they’re doing.
Garry Chernoff of NetIncome Ventures and domain attorney John Berryhill teamed up to successfully defend the domain name Hennessey.com in a UDRP.
There are a couple interesting things about this case:
1. If I see a UDRP and the complainant is not who I would have thought it would be, that’s a pretty good sign that the complaint will fail.
In this case, when I saw the domain Hennessey.com, I assumed the complainant was cognac maker Hennessy.
But the complainant is actually the company behind Hennessey Performance Engineering, which soups up sports cars.
2. Hennessey argued that Chernoff and Berryhill were “UDRP veterans” that “seem to have figured out various ways in which they can squat on domains without being susceptible to a finding of bad faith or illegitimate use” and asked the panel to take a deeper look.
The three person panel retorted this notion that the two have found ways to sidestep the behavior UDRP was created to stop:
As the Complainant notes, the Respondent, and its attorney, appear to be capable UDRP veterans. According to the Complainant, the Respondent has engaged in the exact kind of behavior that the UDRP was meant to remedy and deter. The Panel disagrees.
The equivalent of the legislative history of the UDRP can be found at:
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/processes/process1/report/index.html
No. 115 of that report states:
A uniform administrative procedure for the cancellation of bad faith domain names registered in deliberate abuse of trademark rights should be available in all open gTLDs.
No. 160 states:
It is considered that concerns about the mandatory nature of the procedure can be greatly alleviated, if not removed entirely, by confining the scope of the procedure to abusive registrations or cybersquatting, ..
No. 171 goes on to define the conditions for abusive registration, which are those found in the UDRP.
Thus, the UDRP must be applied narrowly, on the basis of strict reading of its elements. For the reasons given above, the Panel holds that the UDRP was not meant to remedy the situation concerning the present case.
The panelists were Richard Hill, Sir Ian Barker, and Honorable James A. Carmody — a team of panelist which would definitely qualify as veteran as well.
That’s part of the reason you should hire a domain name specialist as your attorney when you bring a UDRP case.
Hennessey will have to stick with its HennesseyPerformance.com domain.
John Berryhill says
Be sure to note that this year’s UDRP Veterans’ Day parade will assemble at ICANN’s new Playa Del Rey office, and will proceed as is traditional, to the Tomb of the Unknown Privacy Registrant.
Nebraska says
Huh, the first thing I thought of when I read ‘Hennessey’ was the performance car company. Maybe because a neighbor down the street has a Hennessey upgraded Corvette.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Nebraska – I guess I don’t live in that rich of a neighborhood 🙂