You Stole My Domain Name!

In an interesting twist of facts, the Complainant in this proceeding claims to have been the former owner of the disputed domain, "www.all.com", which he used since at least 2005, until Respondent allegedly "stole" it from him in January 2008.  Arguing that Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name and that it was registered and is being used (passively) in bad faith, the Complainant seeks transfer of "www.all.com", relying upon its similarity to his stylized trademark ALL.COM and design, registered in Mexico.

In response, the Respondent claimed that the Complaint failed to mention that the parties had a substantial business relationship dating from 2005, when Respondent financed Complainant's purchase of the disputed domain name, which Complainant was supposed to register in both his and Respondent's name and to develop into a "search engine" website.  The Respondent relied upon correspondence in 2005, as well as a document entitled "Domain Name Purchase Agreement", made as of January 10, 2008 between Complainant as "seller" and Respondent as "buyer", under which seller agreed to transfer to buyer his entire right, title and interest in and to the disputed domain name, together with other rights, for $80,000 (of which $40,000 was said to have been paid in 2005).  Respondent additionally relied upon an invoice for $40,000 for the domain name "all.com", purportedly signed by Complainant, as well as a payment order confirmation showing the monetary transfer.  According to Respondent, Complainant controls the proceeds from the sale of the domain name and is using the WIPO proceeding in an attempt to steal the domain name which he sold only a few months ago.

In reply, Complainant denied Respondent's allegations, denied engaging in the 2005 correspondence and disputed the genuineness of the documents proffered by Respondent, claiming that the documents and his purported signature were forgeries.

The Panel was faced with a difficult predicament, as this case required the Panel, based on the limited material before it and without hearing evidence on oath or affirmation, tested by cross examination, to determine issues of fraud, theft and forgery, involving the credibility of the parties.  These issues go beyond the usual relatively simple and straightforward questions that are within the scope of the Panel's limited jurisdiction under the Policy.  Under these circumstances, and recognizing that an unscrupulous respondent could manufacture a dispute beyond the reach of the UDRP in order to retain a stolen domain name, the Panel was unable to come to a conclusion on the forgery issue merely on the materials submitted by the parties (which did not include any original documents) and in the absence of the kind of full hearing that is available in court proceedings.  Based thereon, the Panel expressed no view on the respective merits of the parties' cases as presented in this dispute and denied both the Complaint and Respondent's request for a finding of reverse domain name hijacking.  Eric Haddad Koenig v. All Ltd, Selena Kovalski, WIPO Case No. D2008-0322