Add Adjudicate Today Pty Limited of Mona Vale, of New South Wales, Australia to the list of those found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name adjudicate.org.au

The company claimed a common law right to the term “Adjudicate Today” and somehow tried to get the one word domain name Adjudicate.org.au based off that common law right.

Here is what the one member panel found:

“On its own case, the Complainant does not have any registered trade marks for ADJUDICATE or ADJUDICATE TODAY but instead seeks to establish that ADJUDICATE TODAY is a common law trade mark.”

“The Complainant does not seek to establish that it has common law rights in ADJUDICATE on its own.”

“In any event, given the nature of the word “adjudicate”, the activities of the Complainant, and the use of the word “adjudication” in the Security of Payment legislation, there would be a heavy burden placed on the Complainant should it wish to establish rights in the word “adjudicate” in relation to adjudication services. ”

“For the avoidance of doubt, the Panel therefore finds that the Complainant has not established any common law rights in “adjudicate” on its own.

 

“The Panel therefore finds that the disputed domain name is not identical to the Complainant’s name. Nor is it confusingly similar. ”

“The Panel therefore finds that the Complainant has failed to satisfy the requirements of paragraph 4(a)(i) of the Policy.

“Given that the Complainant would have been aware that the Respondent had a more than negligible adjudication business in Australia at the time the Complaint was filed, the Panel is of the opinion that the Complainant knew or should have known that it could not prove that the disputed domain name was registered in bad faith. Therefore, the Panel finds that this is an instance of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.”