The UDRP case regarding ZIC.COM
 

SK Lubricants Americas found Guilty Of Reverse Domain Name Highjacking on 12 year old domain name ZIC.com. Panelists decide that this is a complaint which should never have been launched.
 

SK Lubricants Americas loses its UDRP case in its attempt to unfairly grab 12 year old ZIC.com domain name.


The 3-party WIPO panel unanimously found SK Lubricants Americas to be Reverse Domain Name Hijackers.

 


The domain name ZIC.com was originally registered back in 2003 and the current owner obtained the domain name in 2015. The Complainant initiated the UDRP case following its failed Plan "B" attempt to buy the domain name. (The Complaint is used as a Plan “B” option to acquire a domain after commercial negotiations have failed.)


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

The WIPO panelists stated:

"the Respondent has as much right as anyone else to use expressions such as acronyms, generic, dictionary words or other domain names made up from a small number of letters.” “Holding Names for sale is not improper. And responding to demand/request for purchase is ok, "

The ruling on the case (SK Lubricants Americas v. Andrea Sabatini, Webservice Limited) can be found at WIPO Case No. D2015-1566
 

In deciding that the Complainant was guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking, the panelists' conclusion sums up by saying:

"In the view of the Panel this is a complaint which should never have been launched. The Complainant should have appreciated that establishing registration and use in bad faith in respect of a domain name which had first been registered many years previously and which was a three letter acronym was likely to involve difficult considerations which was a three letter acronym was likely to involve difficult considerations. It is not clear to the Panel whether the above email was formulated with the benefit of legal advice but it does not matter – the statement that an offer to sell a domain name which corresponds to a trademark is itself evidence of bad faith is simply wrong. Carrying on business in registering descriptive or generic domain names is not of itself objectionable ” "

and

"The Complainant appears to have ignored any such considerations. Given the nature of the Policy and the multiplicity of previously decided cases dealing with similar issues in relation to short acronym type domain names, this was a case that had no reasonable prospects of success. If the Complainant took competent legal advice it should have appreciated that this was the position. If it did not take competent legal advice it has only itself to blame.."

and

"In all the circumstances the Panel agrees with the Respondent that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding,"



  
 
 

There are news stories about the ZIC.com domain name UDRP case on  TheDomains.com "SK Lubricants Guilty of Reverse Domain Hijacking on ZiC.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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