WIPO ruled that Finsure attempted to conduct reverse domain name hijacking, and the application was rejected

Recently, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) issued a ruling in case number D2025-1070, rejecting the complaint filed by Australian fintech company Finsure regarding the domain name finsure.com and determining that its actions constituted reverse domain name hijacking (RDNH).

Finsure submitted the "FINSURE" trademark application in February 2022 and was officially approved in January 2025. The respondent purchased the "finsure.com" domain name through the public auction platform NameJet in January 2023, when the trademark had not yet been registered.

Finsure claimed that the respondent maliciously registered the domain name and sold it at a high price of US$60,000, violating the "malicious registration and use" clause in the UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy). However, the respondent pointed out that he obtained the domain name through a legal auction, and "finsure" itself is a combination of "finance" and "insurance", which has a wide range of industry commonality. He stressed that he did not actively contact Finsure to promote the domain name, and the price of $60,000 came from the default offer of the domain name trading platform Afternic, which was not extortion.

The panel believes that although the domain name is consistent with Finsure's trademark, the registration behavior is earlier than the actual use of its trademark. The complainant failed to prove that the respondent knew its brand or had specific malice when registering. On the contrary, the evidence shows that the domain name was reasonably registered as a common term in the financial industry, and the price setting is a normal market behavior.

More importantly, the panel pointed out that Finsure had offered $50,000 to purchase the domain name before the complaint but failed, and then quickly filed a complaint, which was obviously using the UDRP procedure as a means to obtain the domain name. This behavior constitutes a malicious abuse of the dispute resolution mechanism, so it was ruled that Finsure was suspected of reverse domain name hijacking and the complaint was not supported.

This case reminds us that UDRP is not a "bottom-up plan" after negotiations fail. As long as the domain name is obtained through formal channels and is not registered for a certain brand, the rights and interests of the holder should be protected. For brand owners, the most reliable way to encounter a good domain name is to plan as early as possible and negotiate reasonably, rather than hoping for arbitration to "reverse the situation."