A split decision is unusual in UDRP cases, which makes a recent decision involving the domain name <quobly.com> particularly noteworthy. The case presents an interesting question about timing: if a domain name was registered before a trademark owner even existed, can the registrant’s later conduct nevertheless support a finding that the domain name was registered in bad faith?

Three WIPO panelists looked at essentially the same chronology and reached markedly different conclusions. The result in QUOBLY v. Chris Dolland, WIPO Case No. D2026-2518, was a denial of the complaint. But the agreement largely ended there. Panelist Alexiev found later bad-faith use but no bad-faith registration. Panelist Neuman agreed that the complaint should be denied but would have found neither bad-faith registration nor bad-faith use, and would have found reverse domain name hijacking. Panelist Dalby dissented and would have ordered transfer.

The disagreement provides a useful look at what later conduct can, and cannot, tell a UDRP panel about a registrant’s intentions at an earlier point in time.

The chronology

The timing is unusual. The respondent originally registered the disputed domain name in 2014 and used it in connection with an inspirational-quotes project. The registration later expired, and the respondent re-registered it in 2015. It expired again in 2022, and the respondent registered it again on September 10, 2022.

The complainant did not yet exist at that time. It was incorporated under a different name in November 2022 and did not change its name to Quobly until July 2023. Its French QUOBLY trademark application was filed in June 2023.

Things became more complicated in 2024. After learning about the complainant, the respondent contacted it about purchasing quobly.com. Following several exchanges, the respondent quoted a price of $150,000. He continued following up and at one point told the complainant that traffic from France suggested users might be reaching the site by typing the complainant’s name with the .com extension.
So there were really two different periods to consider: an acquisition of the domain name that predated the complainant, followed by conduct that arguably sought to capitalize on the complainant’s later interest in it.

Three views

Panelist Alexiev separated those periods in his analysis. On registration, the chronology was decisive. The operative registration occurred in September 2022, before the complainant existed and before it had any rights in the QUOBLY mark. The respondent therefore could not have registered the domain name to target the complainant or its trademark. Even if he had registered it hoping someday to resell it, that would amount to an ordinary commercial investment rather than bad-faith registration under the UDRP.

But panelist Alexiev viewed the later sales efforts differently. He concluded that the $150,000 asking price was more likely based on the particular value of the disputed domain name to the complainant than on its inherent value to buyers generally. On that basis, he found bad-faith use. Because the UDRP requires proof that the domain name was both registered and used in bad faith, however, the complaint still failed.

Panelist Neuman agreed that bad-faith registration had not been established, but disagreed about the later conduct. In his view, the record showed that the respondent had independently selected and actually used “Quobly” years before the complainant existed. A later decision to sell that asset, even at a substantial price to a buyer with a particular interest in owning the matching .com domain name, did not necessarily amount to exploitation of trademark goodwill.

As panelist Neuman put the issue, the UDRP does not empower a panel to decide the reasonable market price of a domain name that was independently registered before the trademark owner acquired rights. The fact that the complainant was an especially motivated buyer did not by itself transform aggressive commercial bargaining into cybersquatting.

Panelist Dalby saw the evidence quite differently. He agreed that the complainant did not exist in 2022. But he considered the later $150,000 offer, the absence of convincing evidence of a bona fide use after the 2022 registration, passive holding, and inconsistencies in the respondent’s explanations sufficient to infer bad faith at registration. He characterized the circumstances as sufficiently exceptional to overcome the ordinary problem presented when a domain name predates the complainant’s trademark rights. He therefore would have ordered transfer.

Looking backward

That disagreement gets to the most interesting issue in the case. UDRP bad faith is ordinarily concerned with whether the registrant sought to take unfair advantage of the complainant’s trademark rights. That can be difficult to establish when those rights did not exist at the time of registration. The ordinary rule reflected in the WIPO Overview is that a domain name registered before the complainant acquired trademark rights will not normally have been registered in bad faith, subject to limited circumstances involving anticipation of nascent trademark rights.

The unusual question in QUOBLY is what role subsequent conduct should play. Later conduct can certainly provide evidence about an earlier state of mind. But there is an important difference between using later events to determine what a registrant intended at registration and allowing later conduct itself to supply the bad faith that was missing when registration occurred.

That distinction appears to separate panelist Dalby from panelists Alexiev and Neuman. Panelist Dalby treated the respondent’s subsequent conduct as part of the totality of circumstances from which the original intent could be inferred. Panelists Alexiev and Neuman regarded the chronology as imposing a much firmer limit: whatever the respondent might have done after discovering the complainant, he could not have targeted a company or trademark that did not exist when he registered the domain name.

The lapses

There was another interesting timing problem. The respondent did not continuously maintain the registration from 2014. He deliberately allowed it to expire twice and then registered it again.

Panelist Alexiev concluded that by allowing those registrations to lapse, the respondent effectively relinquished whatever rights or legitimate interests his earlier activities might have provided.

Panelist Neuman drew a finer distinction. The lapses prevented the respondent from treating his 2014 activity as an uninterrupted current business interest, but they did not erase history. The earlier advertising, email accounts, website activity and user signups remained relevant evidence of why this particular respondent had selected the invented term “Quobly” in the first place.

Panelist Dalby took the stricter approach, treating the 2022 registration as the operative starting point and concluding that the respondent ordinarily could not rely on activities connected with registrations he had voluntarily allowed to expire.

There is some useful precedent for keeping the historical context in view. In SHL Medical AG v. Swalen, WIPO Case No. D2020-2333, a respondent apparently re-registered a domain name shortly after it expired and later sought EUR 42,500 to transfer it. The panel acknowledged that the respondent might have been behaving opportunistically by then, but found insufficient evidence that the re-registration itself had targeted the complainant.

Why it matters

The facts in QUOBLY illustrate something that can be easy to overlook in applying the UDRP. A domain name can change in commercial significance over time.

A registrant can select a domain name innocently. Years later, someone else can adopt the same term as a trademark. The registrant can then discover the trademark owner and realize that the domain name has become particularly valuable to that company. From there, the registrant may behave opportunistically.

The difficult question is what follows from that opportunity. The panelists in QUOBLY were not really divided about when the relevant events occurred. They were divided over what later events were permitted to tell them about an earlier one. Panelist Alexiev allowed later conduct to establish bad-faith use but not bad-faith registration. Panelist Neuman was unwilling to characterize even the later sales conduct as bad faith on the record presented. Panelist Dalby considered that same later conduct powerful enough, together with the other circumstances, to support an inference of bad faith going all the way back to the 2022 registration.

So can bad faith travel backward in time? Based on QUOBLY, the answer may depend on what one means by “travel.” Later conduct can illuminate earlier intent. The harder question is whether it can illuminate an intent to target trademark rights that did not yet exist.

QUOBLY v. Chris Dolland, WIPO Case No. D2026-2518