WIPO panel finds complaint against DigiMedia.com was brought in bad faith.

Legendary domain name investor Scott Day’s company DigiMedia.com has won a charge of reverse domain name hijacking against a Dubai company.

Prime Pictures LLC filed the case in an attempt to get the domain name CinemaCity.com.

But DigiMedia.com had registered the domain name way back in 1998, about 7 years before the complainant used “CinemaCity” in commerce. That clearly means the domain name wasn’t registered in an attempt to harm the complainant.

The three person World Intellectual Property Forum panel found Prime Pictures guilty of reverse domain name hijacking, saying its counsel should have been aware that its case was doomed before it even began.

    In the present case, the Complaint correctly identified that the Domain Name was registered in 1998. Given that the earliest date of any registration or use of the mark relied upon in the Complaint was in 2005, the registration of the Domain Name could not have been in bad faith on any interpretation of the facts and cases cited in the Complaint.

    The Complainant is represented in this proceeding by legal counsel who has evidently examined the UDRP and a number of cases decided under it, which are cited in the Complaint. Any reasonable investigation would have revealed that there was a fundamental weakness in the Complainant’s case, in that there was no basis in the Complaint and cases cited therein for alleging that the Domain Name was registered in bad faith.

DigiMedia.com was represented by John Berryhill.