No surprise: WIPO kicks boot company to the curb in Thursday.com dispute

Thursday Boot Company tried to reverse domain name hijack thursday.com

Sometimes you’d be willing to bet that a UDRP will result in a reverse domain name hijacking finding based on the domain alone, before even seeing the facts.

Thursday.com is one of those cases.

Thursday Boot Company filed a UDRP against the valuable thursday.com domain name, and the World Intellectual Property Organization panelist found that the dispute was filed in bad faith.

It’s a fairly egregious case. The domain owner acquired the domain for $40,000 in 2011, well before the boot company existed. So it’s impossible that the domain owner registered the domain to target the boot company.

To overcome this obvious deficiency, Thursday Boot Company argued retroactive bad faith, citing some mostly discredited early UDRP decisions. Panelist Christopher Gibson noted that, even if the thinking in those earlier cases was applied, this case was very different. The domain owner hasn’t done anything to target the domain owner, such as changing the use of the domain to sell boots.

Gibson determined that the domain wasn’t registered and used in bad faith and ruled that this was a case of reverse domain name hijacking.

Beard & Barks PLLC represented Thursday Boot Company, and Taft, Stettinius & Hollister, LLP represented the domain owner.