https://udrp.adr.eu/decisions/detail?id=65fab3e46fc02956a010...
Will probably be the first thing I remember when I hear their name.
Actually, the company’s trademarks are from 2017 and he got his name via marriage in 2020.
Still a stupid suit
i didn't know that prince was the same as prince rogers nelson (only vaguely remembered the name prince as a musician from dances at high school), so googled his name:
That is enough proof to conclude that this UDRP thing is deeply unfair and should not exist.
"First come, first served" is much more fair than this "burden of proof falls on the defendant" nonsense.
We'll have to replace ICANN with something better at some point.
I believe it serves that purpose reasonably well.
There are three criteria that ALL have to be met (1. identical or confusingly similar to your trademark, 2. registrant doesn't have a legitimate reason, 3. registered/used in bad faith). In cases where these are met, it's pretty clear that the owner should be losing the domain.
I think it would make sense to add a rule that someone who issues a spurious UDRP request should be required to pay the domain holder some default amount of compensation for the hassle, but overall, I think this is a process that makes the Internet better, not worse.
If I was in his position, I would definitely feel the implicit threat of "if you're not willing to provide all the info we're requesting, you lose your domain".
> 2. registrant doesn't have a legitimate reason, 3. registered/used in bad faith
I've read arbitration cases where "The Expert" says (simplifying): "the site is being used for illegal activities, so there's no legitimate use", when no actual court or official institution has declared that the site's content is illegal*. So, you're at the whims of some "Expert's" opinion of what's legitimate, even if it may eventually contradict the actual justice system of your country.
I have very little trust on the competence and fairness of UDRP arbitration.
* And it's not a case where the things are evidently illegal, it's very debatable if they are.
As I understand it, either side can escalate to the justice system in the end.
This does bring up a question though; I've had arp242.net for a long time, and obviously that's not my actual name. Can some company register "arp242" as a trademark and hijack my domain?
In your example, you had that domain well in advance, it's your self-identified pseudonym that predates said mark, and it's actively being used to host your personal website. That seems like a pretty strong defense.
My birth cert, bank accounts, passports etc. are issued in various jurisdictions with various names. I'm not an international man of mystery or tax cheat, but I'm known by various equally legitimate names. It is a bit of a bother when someone around they must all be identical, but there's no crime or deception.
As I mentioned, this will cause some difficulty with people and organisations who assume names are unique and immutable(c.f. [0]), but that's not a legal issue and is no different to someone not coping with any other unusual but allowable circumstance.
[0] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
Try opening a bank account like that. I can guarantee you it's not going to work; they will want to see a passport and proof of address with exactly the same name. I've been rejected by banks just because the utility bill shortened my second middle name to just "P".
This seems true for pretty anything of substance: government, tax, banks, insurance, health care, things like that. I'm not a lawyer and don't know how it works according to the letter of the law, but de-facto, you will have a "legal name".
so he didn't much care about it as his email address as he generally used his other domain christian-scipio.de? https://www.christian-scipio.de/contact
However, the total window of time here is small. They registered the domain in late November 2023 and this UDRP was filed in late February 2024. It also sounds like initial contact to try to acquire the domain occurred in early December 2023... so only a couple days after it was registered.
Shame on SCIPIO.
> While the Complainant may have 'sailed very close to the wind' in this case [...] the Complainant's conduct in this case does not appear to fall squarely into the realm of any of the above mentioned [Reverse Domain Name Highjacking] circumstances. Therefore, the Panel has decided not to make a finding of RDNH on this occasion. The Panel however cautions the Complainant to only invoke the [Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy] Policy in the future in circumstances under which the Complainant is able to identify the bases and adduce evidence in respect of all three UDRP Policy grounds.
So yeah, name-n-shame on their leadership such as *checks* CEO Pierre Chaumat and friends. [0]
[0] https://scipio.bio/news/scipio-bioscience-appoints-new-ceo-t...
I have twice found myself defending my IP rights when a business in one case, a government ministry in another, attempted to dispute my right to use the work that they had themselves stolen, wholesale.