Kosmos Global Holding, SL Attempts Reverse Domain Name Hijacking – Domain Name Wire

The company did not exist when the domain was registered.

A World Intellectual Property Organization panel found that Kosmos Global Holding, SL attempted to hijack the reverse domain name kosmos.com.

Kosmos Global, a sports and entertainment company in Spain, uses the domain name kosmosholding.com.

The deal was dead on arrival because the owner of the domain, Orion Global Assets, had acquired the domain before Kosmos Global existed. Therefore, the domain owner could not have registered it to target the complainant.

Kosmos Global attorneys at MERX IP have selected a few old UDRP cases to show that “retroactive bad faith” can be found. But the panel noted that this line of thinking has been discredited. The panel wrote:

…In particular, given that Complainant’s representatives cited UDRP case law extensively, the Panel finds it unlikely that they were unaware of the current overwhelming opinion of UDRP panelists as to the need for prove registration as well as use in bad faith and that cases over 10 years old cited in this regard are no longer relevant.

Apparently, Complainant also omitted from evidence an email that his lawyer sent to the domain owner’s broker offering to buy the domain. This omission is particularly interesting because the Complainant did include proof that a broker contacted them to acquire the domain. This broker, Lumis, told the complainant, “we do not own Kosmos.com and we do not represent the owner of this domain.” Yet Kosmos wrote in its complaint that the defendant is “contacting potential buyers through a supposedly independent broker.”

Lumis contacted the complainant about a year before Kosmos Global contacted the domain owner’s real domain broker.

John Berryhill, the attorney who represented Orion Global Assets, told Domain Name Wire that it might be beneficial to include information about your broker sales. For example, you can identify an exclusive broker, declare that the declarer does not make outbound solicitations and if you receive one, it is not authorized, etc.