The Irish company Klir Platform Europe Limited lost a dispute over the domain klir.com, which it tried to obtain by filing a UDRP. Moreover, a three-person panel of arbitrators found the company guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. The decision was made by the Canadian International Internet Dispute Resolution Center (CIIDRC). Domain Name Wire, reporting the news, notes that CIIDRC received ICANN accreditation only in 2019. CIIDRC has ruled on 29 UDRP cases to date, and this was its first decision on reverse domain name hijacking.
It is hard to disagree with the fairness of this decision. Klir Platform Europe Limited develops software for water and sewage utilities. The company uses klir.io for its website but has tried several times to acquire the more preferable klir.com domain. However, the domain registrant, David Hendrix from the US, asked each time for a price that seemed too high to the buyer. Then Klir Platform Europe Limited probably decided to resort to “Plan B.” The company filed a UDRP in an attempt to prove that the registrant was using its name in bad faith.
In support of this version of the story, documents were submitted indicating that the company was founded in 2014, and the domain was acquired by its current registrant in 2016. However, lawyer John Berryhill, who represented the interests of the defendant, managed to find other documents as well. The records showed that the company was registered as Elm Consulting & Solutions Limited in 2014 and changed its name to Klir only in 2018 – that is, after the purchase of the domain by the current owner. After that, there could be no doubt about the outcome of the proceedings.
