Example of Reverse Domain Name HIjacking Attempt

[Andrew A. Adams]

The UK's Open Rights Group was recently approached by the eco-labs.org 
non-profit who are being harassed by the commercial organisation ecolab over 
the use of the .org domain name eco-labs.org (the commercial web site is at 
ecolabs.com). There's a blog post by an eco-labs.org rep here:

http://ecolabs.posterous.com/ecolabs-under-assault#

This is the sort of attempt at reverse domain name hijacking that we need to 
be pressing ICANN to deal with:

.org was set up with the aim of supporting non-profits (although it has no 
official requirement in its terms that registration is only by non-profits);
there is absolutely no attempt as passing off on the eco-labs.org site which 
does not compete in any way, as it offers free educational information, not 
chemicals and chemical services;
there is no commercial content, not even advertising, on the eco-labs.org 
site which could fall under the ihateryanair.org.uk precedent (a Nominet DRP 
precedent, admittedly);
as pointed out in the blog entry, the combination of two generic terms like 
"eco" and "lab" hardly seems legitimate for a trademark in the first place 
and certainly does not seem valid for a broad claim of ownership of all 
derivative domain names;
there is no evidence of bad faith registration - eco-labs.org have been 
operating since 2007 providing educational information.

eco-labs.org is fighting the request and has taken suitable legal advice on 
dealing with this, but the lack of grounds for a claim strike me as one of 
the big problems with UDRP at present. There seems to be no requirement to 
present a prima facie case for bringing a UDRP request, and forcing a 
non-commercial user to take expensive legal advice and waste their time 
dealing with such spurious reverse domain name hijacking attempts.


-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/