Man tries to reverse hijack lotto domain name – Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News
Complaint filed against the generic name of a lotto-style game.
An Indian man tried to reverse-hijack the domain name sattamatkajico .com, a World Intellectual Property Organization panelist ruled.
Rikshiram Aghria filed the dispute (pdf), citing Indian trademark registrations for the marks SATTA and SATTA MATKA in stylized form.
Satta matka is a numbers-based gambling game that originated in India.
It’s a generic term, which made this dispute fall flat.
UDRP panelist Shwetasree Majumder summed up the flawed case succinctly while finding reverse domain name hijacking:
The Complainant brought this Complaint on the strength of applications filed weeks before the disputed domain name was registered, for a term which the Complainant itself uses as the name of a betting game, while describing that term as coined and asserting goodwill built over years without filing any evidence of use. As stated earlier, “Satta Matka” is a generic term used colloquially in India for a number-based betting game; “satta” means wagering and “matka” means an earthen pot, from which the winning number is drawn and on which players bet. The Complainant knew, or ought to have known, that it could not show that the Respondent had targeted it.
Both parties represented themselves.
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