Case Number: D2022-3270
Complainant: Tox Pressotechnik GmbH & Co. KG
Represented by: Otten, Roth, Dobler & Partner GmbH
Tox Pressotechnik GmbH & Co. KG, an industrial tooling company based in Weingarten, Germany, has been ruled a Reverse Domain Name Hijacker after attempting to transfer the domain tox.com using a UDRP filing. A three-member panel of the World Intellectual Property Organization handed up its ruling on November 23, 2022.
Tox Pressotechnik, which serves the sheet metal industry, owns a number of trademarks for the word “tox”, some dating to 1988. The domain was registered in 2001.
The respondent in the case is a domain investor who claimed the domain name’s generic meaning was far more common to the medical field than to metallurgy. The respondent’s representative, who replied to the UDRP on behalf of the owner of tox.com, also used the argument of laches, and noted the German company had recently made an unsolicited offer to acquire the domain for a sum no greater than $24,000.
The panelists agreed the UDRP was filed on the barest of evidence, noting further that the complainant should have known their complaint could not succeed on one of the three requisite elements of a UDRP complaint, notably the registration and use in bad faith. Despite the fact the domain was registered long after the trademarks were established, the panel found there was little chance the registrant of tox.com could have known of the trademarks or the association of the term “tox” with metal works.
“The three-letter Domain Name corresponds to a dictionary term and was registered more than 21 years ago,” the panel wrote, alluding the respondent’s argument of laches. “The bare-bones Complaint does not establish that the Complainant’s mark had achieved widespread recognition by that time and was uniquely associated with the Complainant,” the panel concluded.
Source: https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/pdf/2022/d2022-3270.pdf