The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) issued a ruling on AB808, a Russian company from St. Petersburg that supplies, installs and designs electronic security tools. Car DVRs account for a significant part its products. The company owns the domain CarCam.ru, which hosts its online store.
But company executives, probably in an effort to expand the business, decided to snatch CarCam.com as well. The name was already registered, and its owner refused to sell. AB808 filed a complaint with WIPO trying to prove that it had more rights to the domain. That was not a wise decision, WIPO arbitrator Marilena Comanescu, who reviewed the complaint, pointed out in her conclusion in a diplomatic manner. “The Complainant should have appreciated that establishing registration and use in bad faith in respect of a domain name which had first been registered seventeen years ago was likely to involve difficult considerations,” she noted in her conclusion. The bottom line is that CarCam.com was registered by its owner in 1996, eight years before AB808 was even founded in 2004, according to its own website. Therefore, any attempts to prove that the domain could have been registered and used to damage the interests of a Russian company were futile. According to Domain Name Wire, following the WIPO decision, CarCam.com remained with its owner, while AB808 was found to have attempted reverse domain name hijacking.
