The company obtained trademark rights after the current owner acquired the domain.

A World Intellectual Property Organization panelist has found (pdf) that Katek AG, a German electronics manufacturing company, attempted to reverse hijack the domain name katek.com.

Domain investor Stanley Pace acquired the domain name, which is also a surname, in 2012. Fatal to Katek AG’s case was that this was before it had any trademark rights in the name.

The company tried to argue that the domain had changed hands after 2012, but a historical Whois record showed that Pace acquired the domain that year, and he is still the registrant.

Katek AG first tried to acquire the domain before filing the dispute. It also offered to settle the dispute after the filing.

In finding reverse domain name hijacking, panelist Mehmet Polat Kalafatoğlu wrote:

The Panel first considers its findings above regarding the Complainant’s failure to demonstrate that a posttrademark transfer had occurred and to meet its burden of proving the bad faith registration of the disputed domain name. In this regard, the Panel particularly notes that following the receipt of the Registrar verification and the Response, it must be acknowledged that the Complainant possessed further information regarding the facts of the dispute, such as the date of the disputed domain name’s acquisition by the Respondent and the Respondent’s identity and business practices. With this available information and when the Complainant’s submissions are considered as a whole, the Panel finds, on balance, that the Complainant should have known that it could not establish the bad faith registration condition. However, after obtaining this information, the Complainant submitted several supplemental filings including unsuccessful arguments regarding its post-trademark transfer allegation and settlement offers that could reasonably be considered low. Moreover, the Panel notes that two relevant facts have been inserted into the case file with the Complainant’s supplemental filings. First, the Complainant stated that it made an unsuccessful offer to buy the disputed domain name at the beginning of 2026 (therefore, before the filing of the Complaint). The Complainant did not disclose the amount of its offer. Second, the email communication dated March 25, 2026, sent from the email address confirmed by the Registrar as the one for the Respondent, shows that the priority of the disputed domain name has been brought to the Complainant’s attention. The same email communication includes a message from February 2025 via a third-party platform with an offer to buy the disputed domain name for USD 100, which appears to originate from the Complainant’s parent company. In the Panel’s view, these facts indicate that the Complaint has been filed after an unsuccessful attempt to acquire the disputed domain name from the Respondent without a plausible legal basis.

Wuesthoff & Wuesthoff Patentanwälte und Rechtsanwalt PartG mbB represented Katek AG, and John Berryhill represented Pace.