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Companies
Owned By One of World's Richest Men Found Guilty
of Reverse Domain Hijacking
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This
was not a good week for Hong Kong based
billionaire Li Ka Shing
who Forbes Magazine
listed as the world's 11th richest man
last year. A World Intellectual
Property |
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Organization
(WIPO) domain name dispute
adjudication panel ruled
that two of Shing's companies (Cheung
Kong (Holdings) Limited and Cheung
Kong Property Development Limited)
were guilty of reverse domain name
hijacking when they tried to wrest an IDN
domain name, 長江.com (YangtzeRiver.com)
away from its rightful owner, Canada's
Netego DotCom.
The Muscovitch
Law Firm, experts in
Intellectual Property and Internet Law
represented Netego in the dispute. Firm
Principal Zak Muscovitch said,
"This judgment is a great victory
for our client, Netego, and sends
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strong
message to any large company that
thinks that they can abuse the legal
system to wrestle a domain name away
from the rightful owner. The fact is
that the Yangtze River was around long
before Li Ka Shing’s corporate name.
Accordingly, anyone in the world,
including my client, has a right to
register this domain name." |
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Cruise
boat on the Yangtze River |
Li
Ka Shing’s companies had alleged that
Netego registered the domain name eight
years ago in order to capitalize off of
the complainant’s trademark rights in
"Cheung Kong" (meaning Yangtze
River). Netego however defended the
legal proceeding on the basis that it
had an inherent legitimate interest to
register the name of one of the most
famous rivers in the world, the Yangtze
River, as a domain name, and was using
it in connection with a web site about Yangtze
river cruises. |
Muscovitch said
this was not the first time Li Ka Shing’s
companies had tried to grab this domain name.
Only months before, they had tried and lost a nearly
identical arbitration against Netego. The
Panel of three intellectual property
adjudicators stated in their decision that
"what is particularly troubling here is
that Complainants never even notified the Panel
that this was a re-filed Complaint. The
fact that the submitted Complaint nowhere refers
to the previous proceeding suggests to the Panel
that Complainants may have deliberately
attempted to hide that fact from the
Panel." Accordingly, the WIPO Panel found
that Li Ka Shing’s companies’ actions
constituted an "abuse of process"
and therefore entered a finding of "Reverse
Domain Name Hijacking".
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