QLP.COM

Quality Logo Products Inc. represented by Law Firm Golan & Christie loses its UDRP case in an attempt to unfairly grab 14 year old QLP.com domain name.

WIPO Panelist called the Quality Logo Products' case a "Groundless Complaint", "Irresponsible Conduct" and "an Abuse of the UDRP Process".

Richard G. Lyon, WIPO Panelist stated : "We owe it to this Respondent (Get On The Web Ltd) to chastise the Complainant (Quality Logo Products Inc.) and its representative (Law Firm Golan & Christie) for their irresponsible conduct. We owe it to the integrity of the UDRP process to call out patent abuses such as I believe this case to be."

Get on the Web Limited, a long established UK-based company registered the domain name QLP.com over 14 years ago on the 24th November 1999.  Much more recently incorporated Quality Logo Products Inc and their lawyers Golan & Christie in their submission repeatedly and incorrectly stated that Get on the Web Limited obtained the QLP.com domain name in 2005.  As WIPO pointed out "The facts set out in the Response regarding the Respondent’s prior use of the disputed domain name are public and could have been discovered by the Complainant with minimal due diligence."

Furthermore in their complaint, Golan & Christie representing Quality Logo Products Inc submitted a trademark certificate showing their claimed first date use of the term QLP in a design of 2003 which (if it had been correct) would have predated their incorrectly stated date of acquisition by Get on the Web Limited of 2005 of the domain name QLP.com.  In their submission, Golan & Christie representing Quality Logo Products Inc failed to mention that this was an error which had subsequently been corrected prior to the complaint by the USPTO (United States Patent & Trademark Office) to have a first-use date of 2013 not 2003! See Trademark Certificate submitted by Complainant.

Quality Logo Products Inc (Bret Bonnet and Michael Wenger) represented by Anita J. Pancholi and Beverly A. Berneman of Chicago based Law Firm Golan & Christie had their complaint denied by WIPO the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Get on the Web Limited was represented by John Berryhill.

According to Linkedin Anita Pancholi left Golan & Christie to work as an attorney at the Chicago office of Law Firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP. In 2019, Anita Pancholi moved on again and is now Associate General Counsel at Nielson in Chicago.

The WIPO ruling on the case (Quality Logo Products Inc v Get on the Web Ltd) can be found at WIPO Case No.: D2013-1691

See Domain Sherpa interview with John Berryhill which discusses the Quality Logo Products Inc v Get on the Web Ltd UDRP case "Do Not Abuse the UDRP as Your “Plan B” for Acquiring a Domain Name"

Richard G. Lyon, panelist's concluding paragraph sums up by saying:

"The filing of this groundless Complaint has put the Respondent to considerable time and expense, including payment of the necessary fee for a three-member panel. We owe it to this Respondent to chastise the Complainant and its representative for their irresponsible conduct. We owe it to the integrity of the UDRP process to call out patent abuses such as I believe this case to be."

So why did one panelist find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking but the other two (Presiding Panelist Jonas Gulliksson of law firm Advokatbyrån Gulliksson and Panelist Christopher K. Larus of law firm Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi) didn’t? Why didn’t the other two panelists agree with Lyon?

Andrew Allemann Editor of DomainNameWire says "It’s impossible to tell, but there is a detail that doesn’t look good. The two other panelists were Jonas Gulliksson and Christopher K. Larus. The first name may ring a bell, as Gulliksson’s law firm is representing the complainant in the highly questionable UDRP for StableTable.com. Would a complainant’s law firm not want to find other companies guilty of reverse domain name hijacking out of fear it would be called out for RDNH itself? I don’t know, but it doesn’t look good. Law firms should either be UDRP arbitration panelists or representatives, but not both. "

The UDRP case by law firm Golan and Christie representing Quality Logo Products Inc. regarding the 14 year old QLP.com domain name (registered and used years before Quality Logo Products even existed) was called a "Groundless Complaint".

See other similar recent UDRP cases regarding domain names registered years before complainants existed which Panelists variously call "a Baseless Complaint", "a Foolish Waste of Time", "Devoid of Merit", "Borders on the Absurd" and "a Complaint which should never have been launched" and which talks of Johnny-Come-Lately trademark owners who register trademarks and try to seize pre-existing domain names.

There are news stories about the QLP.com domain name UDRP case on  TheDomains.com DomainNameWire.com and DomainNameStrategy.com

The QLP.com UDRP case is also mentioned in the CircleID article "The Hidden Perils of Filing a Baseless UDRP Complaint" .

Reverse Domain Name Hijacking is defined under the UDRP Rules as "using the UDRP in bad faith to attempt to deprive a registered domain-name holder of a domain name".

There are numerous sources for "Reverse Domain Name Hijacking".  Amongst these are RDNH.com and HallOfShame.com (which includes a list of some 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