In the recent toros.com UDRP case, the complainant Toros Tarim Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi and their legal counsel crossed several ethical lines that deserve to be called out by the domain industry.
First, Toros Tarim’s lawyers blatantly misled the WIPO panel by claiming the respondent Rosa Maria Vicente Casado had offered to sell toros.com to their client for $37,000 through the renowned domain broker Saw.com. However, Saw.com founder Jeffrey Gabriel flatly contradicted this, declaring under penalty of perjury that his company was never engaged by the respondent to broker that domain to Toros Tarim. Rather, it was Toros Tarim who approached Saw.com seeking to acquire toros.com, and Saw.com provided an appraisal showing that $37,000 was “unrealistically low.”
The respondent submitted a sworn declaration from Jeffrey Gabriel, the founder and CEO of Saw.com, stating that Saw.com was never engaged by the respondent to offer toros.com for sale to Toros Tarim.
Instead, Gabriel declared that it was actually Toros Tarim who approached Saw.com seeking to buy toros.com on their behalf. Gabriel said Saw.com provided Toros Tarim with an appraisal showing $37,000 was “unrealistically low” as an offer price for that domain.
Making verifiably false claims to a UDRP panel is an egregious violation of the process’s integrity and basic ethical standards for lawyers. Toros Tarim’s counsel should be ashamed and potentially face disciplinary action for this misconduct.
Secondly, Toros Tarim accused the Spanish respondent of targeting them by resolving toros.com to a landing page with gambling links that are illegal in Turkey. However, the evidence showed this was caused by the respondent’s former host provider HostPapa deciding to display pay-per-click ads through Bodis without the respondent’s knowledge or consent – not any planned action by the respondent.
It is appalling for a large corporate complainant to make such incendiary allegations of criminal conduct when the root cause was unauthorized action by a third-party hosting provider outside the respondent’s control.
A review of the toros.com records collected by Security Trails shows that the domain name has its DNS settings set to HostPapa with an A-record redirect to Bodis.
HostPapa denied any involvement in this redirect. I stands to reason that one of HostPapa’s active customers caused toros.com’s A-record to Bodis. How many other domain names is that rouge customer monetizing without authorization.
A simple abuse complaint to HostPapa or Bodis could have resolved the redirect issue displaying gambling ads that were allegedly illegal in Turkey. It’s likely that the device used to capture evidence of the PPC ads had previously visited gambling websites. The ads displayed by Bodis are typically retargeted based on the device’s prior browsing history, even if cookies are cleared. This shows an unacceptable lack of diligence and disregard for the truth by Toros Tarim and it’s lawyers.
Historical evidence from the WayBack Machine shows that domain toros.com was used in good faith, in connection with a Spanish language directory website.
So in summary, Saw.com’s CEO directly contradicted Toros Tarim’s claim about a $37,000 offer under oath, and technical evidence proved the controversial links were not intentionally deployed by the longtime toros.com owner.
Toros Tarim and their lawyers failed miserably here and brought disrepute to the UDRP process through their misleading tactics over a .com domain matching a common dictionary term. They deserve harsh criticism and should be held accountable by WIPO and Turkish bar authorities.
Summary of toros.com UDRP Case:
- The Turkish company Toros Tarim filed a UDRP against the domain toros.com, which was registered in 1997 by a Spanish respondent who had a longstanding family business related to bullfighting. The respondent’s brother even owned a Spanish trademark for TOROS.COM for this business.
- The respondent is Rosa Maria Vicente Casado and her company Bulevar Informatica S.L. based in Spain.
The respondent’s brother owns a Spanish trademark for TOROS.COM used for their family bullfighting business.
The toros.com domain was registered in 1997 by the respondent and used for a bullfighting website for many years, displaying their brother’s TOROS.COM trademark. - Despite the non-trademark meaning of “toros” as simply “bulls” in Spanish, Toros Tarim alleged the respondent had no rights to the domain and tried to sell it for $37,000 through the broker Saw.com. However, Saw.com decisively refuted this claim.
- Toros Tarim also blamed the respondent for the domain showing gambling links when visited from Turkey, despite evidence this was caused by the respondent’s former hosting provider placing unauthorized PPC ads.
- In the end, the WIPO panel denied Toros Tarim’s case, allowing the respondent to keep toros.com. The panel also found the complainant engaged in reverse domain name hijacking through its misleading arguments and evidence.
Toros.com UDRP Issues:
- Whether the domain is identical/confusingly similar to the complainant’s TOROS marks.
- Whether the respondent has rights or legitimate interests in the domain based on the ordinary Spanish meaning “bulls” and their planned bullfighting business use.
- Whether the domain was registered and used in bad faith targeting the complainant’s trademarks.
- Whether the complainant engaged in reverse domain name hijacking by making misleading claims.