It waited a long time to come after the domain name.

Mexican company Industrias Tamer S.A. DE C.V., aka MIKELS, has failed to convince a World Intellectual Property Organization panelist to award it the domain name mikels.com.

Domain investor Stanley Pace acquired the domain no later than 2009. While the Complainant existed well before that, and UDRP doesn’t generally accept the doctrine of laches, panelist Kaya Köklü noted that the long delay calls the case into question:

Additionally, even if the doctrine of laches may not directly apply to the UDRP, the Panel is of the opinion that the long period of inaction by the Complainant cannot remain unconsidered, particularly as the acquisition of the disputed domain name to the Respondent occurred in the year 2009 (claimed to be 2008 by the Respondent – but ultimately this matters not). In its Complaint, the Complainant was not able to provide convincing arguments for 24 years, respectively 13 years of inaction until the UDRP action was filed.

Mikels noted that the domain owner has been involved in about 40 UDRP cases and has lost many of them. (He has challenged some of them in court.) But the panelist took into consideration that the domain owner owns a lot of domains, which means the number of UDRP cases is relatively small. He also specializes in surnames like Mikels:

Even if the Respondent has been involved in previous UDRP cases and lost a major part of them, the Panel finds that this does not necessarily lead to a finding that the Respondent is generally involved in pattern of mass registration of domain names targeting third parties’ trademark rights in bad faith. The Panel rather believes that at least the present case needs to be assessed individually, particularly as the Respondent has allegedly registered more than 60,000 domain names, including 10,000 comprising family names.

The panelist decided that Mikels failed to show the domain was registered and used in bad faith but declined to find reverse domain name hijacking.

Salvador Camacho Hernández represented the Complainant. Howard Neu represented the domain owner.

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