Panelist finds that food service products company filed case in bad faith.

A Nominet Domain Resolution Service panelist has found (pdf) that Especial Ltd tried to reverse hijack the domain names especial.co.uk and especial.uk.

The company, which consults in the food service products space, filed the dispute against domain investor Behrendt Professional Corporation.

Especial Ltd didn’t provide any evidence to support its claims of trademark rights in the term “especial,” which is Spanish for “special.”

Even if it had, panelist Matthew Harris said that it didn’t provide solid evidence of an abusive registration.

Especial Ltd didn’t show that the domains were registered with it in mind, nor did it show that the domains were used to abusively target the complainant.

Instead, the domains were offered for sale for £4,388 and £2,188.

The complainant first tried to buy the domain names. It wasn’t happy with the price, and subsequently threatened to file the dispute unless the respondent sold them for a combined £1,250.

When the respondent didn’t reply, Especial Ltd filed the case.

Harris wrote a lengthy analysis of when reverse domain name hijacking should be found in a .uk dispute. Ultimately, he decided this was such a case, writing:

In the relevant correspondence the Complainant essentially took a position similar to that which it has adopted in these proceedings: that it was essentially entitled to the Domain Names simply because they corresponded to its “registered company name and long-established trading identity”. It then subsequently threatened DRS proceedings because the Respondent refused to engage in negotiations over the price. In short, the Complainant was attempting to use the DRS process to coerce the Respondent into agreeing to sell the Domain Names at a lower price in circumstances where it should have known that it had no basis to do so.