Porn cams site tries to reverse hijack a domain name

Company didn’t show that it had rights in the term prior to its trademark registration.

The operator of a live cams adult website has been found to have tried reverse hijacking a domain name.

Viking Exchange & Marketing Inc. runs a website at voyeurhouse .com. It filed a cybersquatting suit against the operator of voyeur-house .tv.

The Respondent in the case argued that its website is more popular than the Complainant’s website.

The subject domain name has been used since 2015. The Complainant just got a trademark for VoyeurHouse, citing a first-use date of 2000.

In finding reverse domain name hijacking, panelist Alan L. Limbury wrote:

As noted, the Complaint states that the domain name should be considered as having been registered and being used in bad faith because Respondent intentionally chose a domain name identical or confusingly similar to Complainant’s trademark VOYEURHOUSE to capitalize on Complainant’s established reputation. However, Complainant had no established reputation in its then non-existent mark when Respondent chose the domain name. The Panel considers that Complainant must have known that its statement was false and that its Complaint should fail. The Panel therefore finds that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.

I don’t think this reasoning is quite right. Viking’s trademark stated a first use in 2000, so the Respondent could have registered the domain based on the reputation of Viking’s site. The problem is that Viking didn’t show that it was using the domain before 2015 and that it had rights predating its trademark application. So, the case was doomed to fail.