Armor Bank Attempts Reverse Domain Hijacking

Under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), the Panel determined that Armor Bank of Arkansas attempted to reverse hijack the domain name ArmorBank.com through unfair means. Armor Bank is a local bank located in Arkansas, USA, which mainly provides traditional banking services such as deposit accounts, loans and savings to individual and corporate customers.

Case Background

Armor Bank filed a domain name squatting dispute against ArmorBank.com and the corresponding .org domain name, attempting to reclaim these domain names through the dispute resolution policy. However, according to the rules of the UDRP, the complainant must prove that the registration and use of the domain name was in bad faith.

In this case, the registration date of ArmorBank.com was earlier than the date when the bank registered its trademark, which means that the domain name registrant's actions had nothing to do with the bank and could not constitute the fact of bad faith registration.

Panel Decision

The domain name registrant later registered the matching .org domain name and explained that this move was to protect its own legitimate rights and interests. In this regard, UDRP panel member Alan L. Limbury pointed out:

"At the time when the ArmorBank.com domain name was registered, Armor Bank did not have a trademark and had no reputation to speak of. The cases cited by the complainant attempted to prove that the registrant's behavior was malicious and misleading customers, but the premise of these cases was that the complainant's trademark rights must be earlier than the registration date of the disputed domain name. However, in this case, this condition was not met."

The expert further added:

"The complainant represented by a lawyer should know that his argument cannot prove the malicious behavior of the domain name registrant."

Based on this, the panel ruled that Armor Bank's behavior constituted reverse domain name hijacking and dismissed the bank's complaint.

Legal representation and background

In this case, Armor Bank was represented by Mitchell Williams Selig Gates & Woodyard, PLLC, while the domain name owner responded to the lawsuit on his own.

This ruling not only protects the legitimate rights and interests of domain name registrants, but also once again warns companies that attempt to abuse domain name dispute resolution policies: reverse domain name hijacking will not be supported.