DRS Complaint for Rock.co.uk denied as registrants are not obligated to use their domains

An attempt to grab the domain name Rock.co.uk using a DRS complaint, the equivalent to UDRP for .co.uk domains, was denied as the Complainant failed to prove that it had rights to a mark and that the registration was abusive.

The Independent Expert said that “Registrants in the .uk space are under no obligation to use their domain names and failure to do so is not in itself Abusive. While I can understand the Complainant’s frustration in seeing a potentially useful domain name lying unused, this is not a matter for the DRS.”

Rock.co.uk was registered in 2010 by it’s owner from California. The domain does not currently resolve and is registered with Enom.

According to the Independent Expert that handled the case, the Complainant Rock Information Technology Services Limited failed to prove the 2 elements of the URS:

1. Rights (The complainant has, to my reasonable satisfaction, shown Rights in respect of a name or mark which is identical or similar to the Domain name.)
2. Abusive Registration (The complainant has, to my reasonable satisfaction, shown that the domain name rock.co.uk is an Abusive Registration)

The Expert went on to say:

The Complaint is brief and offers little beyond unsupported assertion. In my view, the Complainant has not given enough evidence to show it has rights in the term ROCK. Equally, the Complainant has not set out to my satisfaction why the domain name in the Respondent’s hands is Abusive. Registrants in the .uk space are under no obligation to use their domain names and failure to do so is not in itself Abusive. While I can understand the Complainant’s frustration in seeing a potentially useful domain name lying unused, this is not a matter for the DRS.

So the only argument that the Complainant had was that the owner was not using the domain name. So they thought they could steal the domain but they failed.