The UDRP case regarding VERB.COM

 

  
     
 

Verb Products Inc., Verb Hair Products Canada Inc. and Moroccanoil Israel Ltd. represented by Santa Monica based Law Firm Conkle, Kremer & Engel, PLC loses UDRP case in its attempt to unfairly grab 12 year old VERB.com domain name.

WIPO Panelists called it a "Baseless Complaint" and a "foolish waste of time" and found Verb Products Inc., Verb Hair Products Canada Inc. guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.

  
 


Unanimously all of the three panelists agreed that the VERB.com domain name had neither been registered in bad faith nor was the VERB.com domain name being used in bad faith.


  
  The WIPO Panelists stated : "In the Panel's view, the Complainant represented by counsel should never have filed this baseless Complaint. The Panel finds itself in agreement with the very first sentence in the Respondent's Response: "This Proceeding is a foolish waste of time involving a dictionary word in which the Respondent has a decade of seniority over the Complainant's junior claim in hair care products."  
     
  Talking of Johnny-Come-Lately trademark owners who register trademarks and try to seize pre-existing domain names, the WIPO panelists wrote:  
 


"The Complaint does not allege or show that the Complainant used the alleged VERB mark (hereinafter the “alleged VERB Mark”) in any fashion at the time of registration of the Domain Name in 2002 or for nine years thereafter. Unquestionably the Complainant had no registered or unregistered rights in a VERB trademark at the time of registration of the Domain Name of which the Complainant could have been aware of or upon which he could have intended to capitalize.

Whether or not Johnny-come-lately trademark owners like the Complainant may be able to show rights sufficient to establish the first element of a UDRP claim under paragraph 4(a)(i) of the policy, i.e., at the time of filing of the Complaint, the bad faith registration and use requirements of paragraph 4(a)(iii) of the Policy are generally fatal to their belated claims against prior domain name registrants."

Verb Products Inc.,Verb Hair Products Canada Inc. and Moroccanoil Israel Ltd represented by Santa Monica based Law Firm Conkle, Kremer & Engel had their complaint denied by WIPO the World Intellectual Property Organisation. The respondent was represented by John Berryhill.

The WIPO ruling on the case (Verb Products Inc.; Verb Hair Products Canada Inc.; Moroccanoil Israel Ltd. v. Richard Bloxham) can be found at WIPO Case No.: D2014-1023

  
 

The panelists' concluding paragraph sums up by saying:

"In view of this remarkably insufficient Complaint, the Panel is compelled to find that it was brought in bad faith by the Complainant and constitutes Reverse Domain Name Hijacking."

  
 
 
 

There are news stories about the VERB.com domain name UDRP case on DomainNameWire.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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