Company went after a common Spanish word registered nearly three decades ago.

A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has found Agencia de Aduanas Pasar Ltda., a logistics company in Colombia, guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

The company filed a cybersquatting case against the domain name pasar. It uses the domain name PasarLtda.com for its business.

Pasar is a common Spanish word meaning “to pass”. It also means “market” in Indonesian.

Ming K Chow registered the domain name in 1999. While the complainant was registered as a business in 1978, it didn’t file for trademarks until 2022.

Panelist Matthew Kennedy found (pdf) that the domain was not registered and used in bad faith. In finding reverse domain name hijacking, he wrote:

The Panel notes that the Complainant has legal representation. Despite this, it made no attempt to show that the Respondent could or should have known of the existence of itself or any of its marks at the time when it registered the disputed domain name. It chose to ignore the prolonged interval between the registration of the disputed domain name and the registration of its trademarks, omitting even to state the trademark registration dates in its arguments. Further, the Complainant failed to acknowledge that the disputed domain name is a very common word with multiple meanings that do not refer to itself, such that a good faith use is plausible. There is every reason to believe that the Complainant knew that the Complaint as presented could not succeed on any reasonable interpretation of the Policy.

Clearly, the Complainant feels that it would make better use of the disputed domain name than the Respondent is making of it, but that is no basis for a UDRP complaint. The Complainant has unjustifiably put the Respondent to the time and effort of defending itself.

Muñoz Abogados S.A.S. represented the complainant. The respondent represented himself.