Arbitration and Mediation Center at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva ruled on the complaint of Headhunter within the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution (UDRP) Policy. The company laid claims on the domain Хэдхантер.рус, which was registered by a Russian cybersquatter in 2016. The complaint was filed in the middle of the year; however, the hearing has run over time. The problem was that this was the first case of domain dispute resolution in .РУС. Since the domain is registered in Russia the proceedings were conducted in Russian. Therefore, the formation of a competent bilingual board of arbitrators, harmonization of the language issues and other things significantly complicated the work.
Nevertheless, the decision has been made and it’s final. The lawyer Anton Sergo from a judiciary firm “Internet i pravo” (Internet and law), which presented Headhunter’s interests said that the registration of a domain name could be considered unfair if three conditions are met: the domain name is identical or similar to a trademark or service mark, which the complainant was a right to; the owner of the domain name has to rights or legal interests with respect to the domain name; the domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith. In the end the panel agreed with the arguments of the plaintiff. They also took into account the fact that the defendant offered to sell domain names that used trademarks of other companies. Previously, the firm “Internet i pravo” already represented Headhunter’s interests in domain disputes over HH-IT.ru, I-HH.ru, HH.com.ru, HH-HR.ru, HeadHunter24.ru.
