Domain News

Normann Copenhagen and DLA Piper team up in bad reverse domain hijacking case

June 21, 2017

With help of well-known law firm, furniture company tries to take Normann.com away from guy whose last name is Normann.

Normann Copenhagen ApS, a seller of Scandinavian furniture, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name Normann.com.

This is a really, really bad case of reverse domain name hijacking. It’s particularly surprising that the international law firm DLA Piper was behind it.

The guy who owns the domain name has the surname Normann, so the case was bound to fail on the rights or legitimate interests prong.

Even worse, the guy registered the domain name before the furniture company existed, so there was no chance on bad faith.

Normann Copenhagen knew that the domain had been put to use, too. It argued:

The Respondent has merely used the disputed domain name for a personal mail server, and the Complainant claims that the Respondent does not even use the mail server, since the Respondent has a business engaged within software programming and that the Respondent uses a different mail server for this business.

It turns out that the furniture company and the domain owner had communicated via an @normann.com email address.

Also, a simple look at the Wayback Machine shows that he used the domain name at one point.

Here’s another amusing argument:

[the Respondent] has been offered due compensation by the Complainant in exchange for the domain name on three occasions, but has probably decided to await higher bids, in an effort to profit on the ownership in bad faith. The registration of the domain name in 1996, with no use for 21 years must be interpreted as the Respondent acquiring it as an investment. Thus, the Respondent continues to renew the registration of the domain name in order to higher the domain names value [sic].

It’s too bad the domain owner won’t be compensated for having to hire a lawyer.

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