For a number of years, I have been listing the panelists at WIPO and the FORUM who have Denied Complaints by Trademark holders under the UDRP. This year, I decided to go one step further and list the “BAD” Panelists who seldom, if ever, deny complaints and consistently rule against the Domain Investor and require the transfer of the offending domain to the complainant. However, in doing my research I was surprised to learn that the very same Panelists who were listed as the “Good Guys” also ruled for the Complainant.
What I DID learn is that at WIPO, 155 of the 165 cases requiring transfer of the domain name were Default cases as the Domain Owner never responded and that they were almost all obvious trademark infringements. Even more interesting is that at the FORUM of the 77 cases requiring transfer of the domain, all 77 were defaults because the Domain Owner didn’t file a Response.
So I went back to try to find out who the Domain Owners were that failed to respond to their UDRP Complaint. In the above cited cases, there were 148 different Respondents who failed to file a Response. Of those, the following stood out as there were multiple decisions against them:
Domain Admin – Panama – 3 Decisions
Carolina Rodrigues – Panama – 8 Decisions
Wang Peng Cong – China – 2 Decisions
Milen Radumilo – Romania – 3 Decisions
Super Privacy Service (DYNADOT) – US – 8 Decisions
See Privacy Guardian.Org – 3 Decisions
Li Hou Chang – China – 2 Decisions
These are your Cybersquatters who give us all a bad name. And this was a very limited review of only 242 recently decided cases.
Additionally, the cybersquatters are indeed world wide, hailing from 46 different countries including Indonesia, St. Kitts, Bahrain, Dominica, Belarus, Viet Nam, Thailand, Malaysia, Serbia, Bahamas, Gambia, Algeria, Cameroon, Italy, Grenadines, South Africa, Bangladesh, Georgia, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Luxembourg, Seychelles, Japan, Colombia and Uganda with one each. Next comes Panama, Egypt, Netherlands, Korea, UAE, Nigeria, Ukraine, Germany, Finland and Saudi Arabia with two each. Spain and Romania had 3 each. Russia had 4. Canada is next with 5 and Mexico and the UK with 6. Turkey had 7 different cybersquatters, while France and India had 8 each.
So what country is the Cybersquatting capital of the world? While China had 17, the undisputed “champ” cybersquatting country is the good old US of A with 34 different cybersquatters.
This is just a very small sampling of what gives the domain name industry a black eye. I plan on continuing to call out those individuals who make it harder for every honest Domain Investor to make a buck or two with their domains.
The Neu Facebook
