That’s smelling: Poop scooping company tries reverse domain hijacking

A poop scooping company tried to appeal a cybersquatting decision.

A dog poop clean up company has been found to have tried reverse domain name hijacking.

Scoop Soldiers Services Company, LLC, which runs franchise locations across the United States, filed a cybersquatting case against ScoopSoldier.com (singular). The company uses ScoopSoldiers.com (plural).

This is the second time the company filed a UDRP against the domain name. It lost a previous case last year.

Its basis for refiling was that it says the first case should have been against a different Respondent and that the first panel erred in its decision.

Scoop Soldiers might have some legitimate complaints about the first case. The panel said Scoop Soldiers was descriptive in nature, which seems a bit of a stretch.

But overall, that panel merely decided it was a coincidence that the Respondent registered the domain and forwarded it to its competing business website.

Such are the limits of UDRP. It’s designed to be a quick way to resolve clear-cut cybersquatting cases rather than going to court, where cross-examination can occur.

There’s no appeals process in UDRP other than going to court. Yet Scoop Soldiers tried to appeal to another panel.

Panelist Eugene Low determined that this was a case of reverse domain name hijacking:

It appears to this Panel that this is a case where the principle of res judicata clearly applies (and Complainant was clearly aware of this risk). The reasons for re-hearing put forward by Complainant are inappropriate and insufficient – in particular Complainant ought to have realized that alleging serious misconduct against panelists is a very serious matter and those allegations should not have been lightly made without credible supporting evidence. What Complainant argues here is really its disagreement with the previous panelists’ determination of the matter on merits – this is not an issue of the panelists’ conduct (or misconduct) at all. To this Panel, this case is a speculative re-filing of the previous complaint and Complainant (especially since it is legally represented) knew or should have known that this re-filed Complaint could not reasonably succeed. For these reasons, this Panel makes a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking against Complainant.