The UDRP case regarding ERENTER.COM

  
     
 

E-RENTER USA Ltd. of Bellingham, Washington, United States of America, represented by Brownlie Evans Wolf & Lee, LLP, loses UDRP case in its attempt to unfairly grab 12 year old ERENTER.com domain name.

The 3-party Panel ruled that E-RENTER USA Ltd. clearly should have known at the time that it filed its complaint that it could not prove an essential element under the Policy and found E-RENTER USA Ltd. guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.

  
 


The panelists found that the domain name had neither been registered nor used in bad faith.

  
 
The Panelists stated: "The Domain Name was registered in March 2003. The Complainant was incorporated in July 2003 and started using the E-RENTER Mark in 2004. The Complainant registered the E-RENTER Mark in 2011. While the founder of the Complainant had registered the domain name in 1999 there is no evidence of use of this domain name prior to March 2003. Even taking the Complainant’s evidence at its highest, there is no possibility that the Respondent, when it registered the Domain Name in 2003, could have been aware of the Complainant or its rights in the E-RENTER Mark: The Complainant simply did not exist. For this reason, the Domain Name was not registered in bad faith."		  
 


"The Complainant has argued that bad faith registration and use can be found by the fact that the Respondent is seeking to sell the Domain Name. This argument is unpersuasive to this Panel. The Complainant’s submission that an offer to sell a domain name for valuable consideration in excess of the documented out-of-pocket costs is evidence that the domain name was registered and used in bad faith is an incorrect reading of the Policy."

The WIPO ruling on the case (E-Renter USA Ltd. v. Domain Hostmaster, Customer ID: 55391430909834, WhoIs Privacy Services Pty. Ltd. / Domain Administrator, Vertical Axis Inc) can be found at WIPO Case No.: D2015-0784

  
 

Finding E-RENTER USA Ltd. guilty of reverse domain name hijacking, the panelists' concluding paragraph sums up by saying:

"In the view of the Panel this is a Complaint which should never have been launched.

The Complainant knew that the Domain Name was registered before the Complainant came into existence and close to 8 years before it acquired any registered rights in the E-RENTER Mark. ...

Given the nature of the Policy and previously decided cases that the requirement of proving registration and use in bad faith is conjunctive the Complainant’s submissions that the Respondent registered the Domain Name in bad faith were arguments that had no reasonable prospects of success.

The Panel finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding. "


  
 
 
 

There are news stories about the ERENTER.com domain name UDRP case on TheDomains.com "Owner of e-renter.com Found Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on erenter.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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