Skip to content

IP Twins

Customer Login
Home » Spase, Inc. loses cybersquatting dispute for a third time

Spase, Inc. loses cybersquatting dispute for a third time

Spase, Inc. has failed for the 3rd time to submit a successful UDRP for spase.com. The complainant clearly does not understand the true definition of cybersquatting and how the UDRP process actually works.

Space Inc. are a 3D modelling company and use spase.io as their main domain name. They know that the .com version of their domain is obviously the more popular and widely used extension, and it seems that its more out of desperation that they are trying to lay claims to spase.com.

Spase.com name was registered in 2005 by the current registrant ‘Mrs Jello LLC’, whereas Spase Inc. only started to use the Spase trademark until 2019. Furthermore, the complainants grounds for UDRP are unfounded as the current domain owner does not use the domain name to point to a website that either displays confusingly similar services or products or putting the domain name for sale to the highest bidder. These being only some of the grounds for a higher probability to a successful UDRP filing.

Spase, Inc. filed their first case in 2020 with the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the panel found that it was a case of reverse domain name hijacking (iptwins.com, 2020-10-29). This should have led the complainant to actually review their filing and reconsider their actual rights to the domain name in question. They then tried refiling the case with the National Arbitration Forum in 2020 and were found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking again (iptwins.com, 2021-01-04). In situations like these ‘reverse domain name hijacking’ cases prove that companies especially large multinationals cannot strong arm smaller companies or individuals to give up their domain names, just because they are a well-known brand or have the financial resources to purse multiple UDRP filings.

This decision should have laid the matter to rest, but surprisingly it didn’t, and Spase Inc. turned their attention to the Arab Centre for Dispute Resolution. Not surprisingly they lost again. The respondent ‘Mrs Jello’ did not respond and the panel did not consider reverse domain name hijacking in this case (ACDR, A2021-0021, Spase, Inc. v. Domain Admin/Mrs Jello, February 21, 2021 <spase.com>, panelist: Hossam El-Saghir, denied).

Funnily enough the farce did not end there. After filing the third failed case, Spase, Inc. founder Sahil Gupta uploaded a video complaining about his failures to secure the domain name through UDRP.

Demonstrating his lack of comprehension on cybersquatting issues, he proposed that NASA should file a UDRP against Space.com because the site publishes stories about NASA and runs adverts on it.