Case Number: NAF 1821929
Complainant: Steve Houghton
Represented by: Munck Wilson Mandala, LLP
A three-member panel of the National Arbitration Forum has issued a ruling of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking against a partner of the interstate storage company, SecurLock, after that partner used the UDRP process to grab the domain name securelock.com. The panel handed up its ruling against Steve Houghton on February 13, 2019, about six weeks after the complaint was brought by Mr. Houghton’s attorneys, Munck Wilson Mandala, LLP, of Texas. The domain’s owner, Mediablue Inc. and Kwangpyo Kim, were represented by Jason Schaefer of ESQwire.com.
Mr. Houghton’s case hinged largely upon an assertion of bad faith registration against Mr. Kim, who acquired the securelock.com domain in 2007. Mr. Houghton, meanwhile, has a a 21 year old trademark registration for the stylized word mark, “securlock”.
The Panelists summarized their conclusions succinctly, writing that while existing trademarks for the term “securlock” do exist, Mr. Houghton’s trademark was neither unique nor known globally.
“Complainant has shown that it has relevant rights on the SECURLOCK trademark which is registered in the US. However, the Respondent is based in Korea,” panelists wrote. “The Panel notes that there is no evidence of the worldwide reputation of Complainant’s trademark.”
The ruling was a relatively brief, and written dryly, even for an arbitration ruling. Panelists provided merely statements of their RDNH findings, backed by the normal citations, but did not elaborate on their reasoning, to any great measure.
“The Panel here finds that Complainant knew or should have known that it was unable to prove that Respondent lacks rights or legitimate interests and that Respondent registered and is using the disputed domain name in bad faith,” the panel wrote, adding tersely, “The Panel thus concludes that reverse domain name hijacking has occurred.”
Source: https://www.adrforum.com/DomainDecisions/1821929.htm