DECISION
Xano, Inc. v. Patrick Robalewski
Claim Number: FA2608002237082
PARTIES
Complainant is Xano, Inc. ("Complainant"), represented by Valerie Franxman, California, USA. Respondent is Patrick Robalewski ("Respondent"), Paraguay.
REGISTRAR AND DISPUTED DOMAIN NAME
The domain name at issue is <xano.ai>, registered with Spaceship, Inc.
PANEL
The undersigned certify that they have acted independently and impartially and to the best of their knowledge have no known conflict in serving as Panelists in this proceeding.
Ho-Hyun Nahm and Professor David E. Sorkin as Panelists and Alan L. Limbury as Chair.
PROCEDURAL HISTORY
Complainant submitted a Complaint to Forum electronically on August 3, 2026. Forum received payment on August 3, 2026.
On August 5, 2026, Spaceship, Inc. confirmed by e-mail to Forum that the <xano.ai> domain name is registered with Spaceship, Inc. and that Respondent is the current registrant of the name. Spaceship, Inc. has verified that Respondent is bound by the Spaceship, Inc. registration agreement and has thereby agreed to resolve domain disputes brought by third parties in accordance with ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the "Policy").
On August 12, 2026, Forum served the Complaint and all Annexes, including a Written Notice of the Complaint, setting a deadline of September 8, 2026 by which Respondent could file a Response to the Complaint, via e-mail to all entities and persons listed on Respondent's registration as technical, administrative, and billing contacts, and to postmaster@xano.ai. Also on August 12, 2026, the Written Notice of the Complaint, notifying Respondent of the e-mail addresses served and the deadline for a Response, was transmitted to Respondent via post and fax, to all entities and persons listed on Respondent's registration as technical, administrative and billing contacts.
A timely Response was received and determined to be complete on September 8, 2026.
On September 15, 2026, pursuant to Respondent's request to have the dispute decided by a three-member Panel, Forum appointed Ho-Hyun Nahm and Professor David E. Sorkin as Panelists and Alan L. Limbury as Chair.
Having reviewed the communications records, the Administrative Panel (the "Panel") finds that Forum has discharged its responsibility under Paragraph 2(a) of the Rules for Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the "Rules") "to employ reasonably available means calculated to achieve actual notice to Respondent" through submission of Electronic and Written Notices, as defined in Rule 1 and Rule 2.
RELIEF SOUGHT
Complainant requests that the domain name be transferred from Respondent to Complainant.
PARTIES' CONTENTIONS
A. Complainant
Complainant owns the federally registered XANO trademark and service mark, U.S. Registration No. 4846625 for computer software and related website, web-application, technical-support, and technology-consulting services, with first use in commerce on July 1, 2014. The registration was renewed on September 26, 2025.
The <xano.ai> domain name is identical to Complainant's registered XANO trademark.
Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the <xano.ai> domain name. Complainant has not licensed, authorized, or otherwise permitted Respondent to register or use the XANO trademark, to register any domain name containing the XANO mark, nor to represent any association with Complainant. Respondent is not an employee, contractor, distributor, partner, affiliate, licensee, or authorized representative of Complainant.
There is no evidence that Respondent is commonly known by the name "Xano" or by the domain name.
Respondent is not using the domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services. The domain name resolves solely to a sales landing page offering the domain for purchase for $300,000 or inviting interested parties to make an offer. The sales page describes the domain as: "a bold, brandable domain perfect for AI startups in backend automation, data infrastructure, or no-code/low-code platforms" and "ideal for scalable tech solutions." This description closely tracks Complainant's established field of business. Complainant provides a backend development platform associated with backend automation, data infrastructure, scalable technology, and no-code, low-code, and visual-development solutions. Respondent is therefore not merely offering a coined domain for an unrelated dictionary meaning. Respondent is marketing a domain consisting entirely of Complainant's distinctive mark for use in the same or closely related commercial field in which Complainant operates. Respondent has not made any demonstrable preparation to use the domain name for an independent, legitimate business. Nor is Respondent making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain. Instead, the available evidence indicates that Respondent registered or acquired the domain name for resale and is attempting to derive commercial value from its identity with Complainant's trademark and its suitability for Complainant's specific industry.
Although the offering of domain names for resale is not inherently illegitimate in every circumstance, such activity does not create rights or legitimate interests where the domain consists of another party's distinctive trademark and is promoted by reference to the trademark owner's field of business. Here, the composition of the domain name, the targeted sales description, the absence of any independent use, and the extraordinary asking price collectively demonstrate that Respondent is seeking to trade upon the goodwill associated with the XANO mark.
Respondent registered and is using the <xano.ai> domain name in bad faith. Complainant's trademark rights arose approximately ten years before the domain name was registered; the domain name reproduces Complainant's distinctive mark exactly; the domain name was registered shortly before Complainant's expansion of AI related offerings; Respondent's sales description directly references Complainant's established industry, including backend automation, data infrastructure,
and no-code/low-code platforms; Respondent has made no bona fide use of the domain name and offers it solely for sale; the public asking price is $300,000, far exceeding ordinary domain-registration costs; and the domain name is likely to be understood as an official AI-related Xano domain name.
B. Respondent
Respondent is a professional domain-name investor operating under the brand "LamaDomains." Respondent's business consists of acquiring and reselling short, brandable, generic, and dictionary-word domain names — in particular one-word and four-letter names in the .ai extension. Respondent's portfolio includes, among many others, generic and geographic names alongside a substantial class of short, coined, pronounceable brandable strings of the same construction as the <xano.ai> domain name. The <xano.ai> domain name and <xeno.ai>, which Respondent co-owns and manages, are of identical character: four-letter consonant-vowel strings valued for brandability, priced consistently with the rest of Respondent's short-name inventory.
The <xano.ai> domain name is a four-letter, two-syllable, pronounceable string — an asset class that commands substantial value on the domain aftermarket wholly independent of any party's trademark. Respondent acquired the domain name as part of this ordinary investment activity, not with Complainant in mind.
Respondent has purchased .ai names directly through the .ai registry's own auction and billing system since 2021. On March 13, 2024, Respondent won <xeno.ai> at the .ai registry's public auction for $3,550. Several months later, on August 7, 2024, in the course of his ongoing acquisition of short brandable names, Respondent registered the <xano.ai> domain name — then unregistered and available to anyone at the standard registration fee — because it is a near-identical four-letter variant of <xeno.ai>, which he already co-owned: a routine portfolio-building practice among domain investors. This was not an isolated act: Respondent's registry records show a deliberate family of short "x" strings, including <xno.ai>, <xi.ai>, <xlr.ai>, and <xml.ai>, assembled alongside <xeno.ai> and the <xano.ai> domain name. Respondent's four-letter inventory further includes <celo.ai> (registered January 2021), <aves.ai>, <cubo.ai>, <peso.ai>, and <zibo.ai> (2021), <keta.ai>, <moca.ai>, <nika.ai>, <lalo.ai>, and <emil.ai> (2022), and <dyce.ai>, <faya.ai>, <kios.ai>, and <lilu.ai> (2023–2024) — a continuous, dated acquisition rhythm into which the August 2024 registration of the <xano.ai> domain name falls unremarkably.
Respondent does not dispute that Complainant is the current recorded owner of U.S. Registration No. 4,846,625 for the standard-character mark XANO, nor that the second level of the <xano.ai> domain name is textually identical to that mark.
Respondent has rights and legitimate interests in the <xano.ai> domain name. Dealing in short, brandable domain names is a bona fide offering of goods and services. Panels have long recognized that the acquisition and resale of domain names consisting of short letter-strings, acronyms, dictionary words, or otherwise inherently valuable terms constitutes a legitimate business, provided the domain was not registered to target a specific trademark owner. A four-letter, vowel-balanced string such as "xano" has intrinsic aftermarket value to an unlimited universe of potential users. Respondent's documented portfolio of generic one-word and geographic .ai names demonstrates a consistent, trademark-agnostic investment pattern — precisely the opposite of the cybersquatting pattern the Policy targets.
"Xano" is not exclusively — or even predominantly — associated with Complainant. The official TMview register discloses a crowded international field of XANO trademarks held by unrelated parties. Complainant's XANO mark was itself owned by BB Games, Inc. — an entity unrelated to Complainant's claimed field — for nearly a decade of the period Complainant relies upon. Contrary to the Complaint's central premise, "xano" is not a coined term at all — it is an ordinary word in multiple living languages. Hence "xano" cannot be said to point inevitably to Complainant. A registrant encountering "xano" has an unlimited universe of associations available — which is precisely why short brandable strings of this kind are valuable to investors and startups alike.
The marketing description quoted in the Complaint was not written by Respondent. It was generated by ChatGPT in response to a generic request for sales copy for a short .ai domain name. The phrases "backend automation," "data infrastructure," "no-code/low-code platforms" are stock descriptors that appear in essentially identical form across countless AI-domain marketplace listings for unrelated names; they describe the .ai startup economy generally, not any particular company. Boilerplate produced by a text generator cannot support the Complaint's inference that Respondent "selected and marketed the domain with Complainant in mind."
Respondent has made no use of the <xano.ai> domain name referencing Complainant, its products, its trade dress, or its customers; the domain has never resolved to content impersonating Complainant, hosting pay-per-click advertising against Complainant or otherwise trading on Complainant's goodwill. A neutral "for sale" page, without more, is consistent with Respondent's legitimate resale business.
Complainant must prove both bad-faith registration and bad-faith use. It can prove neither. The chronology contradicts targeting. Respondent registered the <xano.ai> domain name on August 7, 2024. Complainant introduced its first AI features in its release of March 20, 2025, expanded on April 9, 2025, more than seven months AFTER the registration. The domain name cannot have been registered to exploit an AI expansion that did not exist, had not been announced, and would not appear for the better part of a year.
Complainant's Complaint signed August 3, 2026 alleged, under certification, that "[r]egistration also occurred shortly after Complainant expanded and publicly launched artificial-intelligence- agent features" — an assertion flatly contradicted by Complainant's own Annex 6 (Xano's AI feature release data). In the amended Complaint signed August 10, 2026, the identical sentence reappears with a single word silently reversed: registration now "occurred shortly before Complainant expanded and publicly launched artificial-intelligence-agent features." A complainant that certifies one chronology, discovers its own exhibit disproves it, and simply inverts the operative word — transforming its bad-faith theory from exploitation of an existing launch into clairvoyant anticipation of an unannounced one — demonstrates that its "targeting" narrative was constructed backwards from the desired conclusion rather than derived from facts. The surviving theory, that Respondent registered the domain in August 2024 to exploit a product launch Complainant itself had not yet made, is speculation, not evidence, and the Panel should weigh the remainder of Complainant's factual assertions in light of this drafting history.
At the creation date of the <xano.ai> domain name, the USPTO record identified BB Games, Inc. as the owner of the XANO registration. The assignment to Complainant was not recorded until August 26, 2025. Policy ¶ 4(b)(i) requires registration "primarily for the purpose" of selling to "the complainant… or to a competitor of that complainant." Respondent could not have formed the intent to sell to Complainant when the public record did not connect Complainant to the mark at all. A public asking price is not an offer to the Complainant. Respondent has never contacted Complainant, solicited Complainant, or directed any offer at Complainant or any competitor of Complainant — a fact the Complaint itself concedes.
The $300,000 asking price does not evidence targeting. An asking price is not a sale price. List prices across the .ai aftermarket are routinely aspirational, including Respondent's own. Where a seller's public price reflects an optimistic view of a scarce asset class rather than the trademark value of a particular complainant, Policy ¶ 4(b)(i) is not engaged: the provision targets approaching the mark owner for ransom, not ambitious shelf pricing in a documented market. Respondent — like every domain investor — offers multiple names for sale. That is a description of the lawful aftermarket, not a pattern of trademark abuse.
There is no likelihood-of-confusion use. The domain name has never hosted content; it resolves to a registrar sales page. There is no website, no advertising, no impersonation, no email use, and no conduct within ¶ 4(b)(iv).
Respondent respectfully requests that the Panel consider a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. Four circumstances, taken together, indicate that this Complaint was brought primarily to acquire a desirable domain name rather than to remedy cybersquatting:
(i) Complainant filed only after its 2025 pivot into artificial-intelligence offerings made a domain name registered long before that pivot newly attractive to it — while its own Annex 6 (Xano's AI feature release data), in Complainant's possession from the outset, established that no AI offering existed at the registration date;
(ii) Complainant's certified pleading reversed its central chronological allegation between its August 3 and August 10 versions without disclosure, demonstrating that its targeting theory was constructed backwards from the desired outcome rather than from the facts available to it;
(iii) the disputed domain name stood open for hand registration at approximately $140 for years — including throughout the period of Complainant's claimed rights — without Complainant registering it; and
(iv) Complainant made no attempt to contact Respondent before filing.
Respondent recognizes that RDNH is reserved for clear cases — in Sonata Software Limited v. Narendra Ghimire, WIPO Case No. DAI2023-0051 (<sonata.ai>), RDNH was declined where the complainant could sincerely have believed in its case — but a complainant that certifies a chronology its own exhibit disproves, and silently reverses it when caught, cannot claim the same sincerity. Respondent leaves the question to the Panel's judgment on this record.
FINDINGS
Complainant has failed to establish all the elements entitling it to relief.
DISCUSSION
Paragraph 15(a) of the Rules instructs this Panel to "decide a complaint on the basis of the statements and documents submitted and in accordance with the Policy, these Rules and any rules and principles of law that it deems applicable."
Paragraph 4(a) of the Policy requires that Complainant must prove each of the following three elements to obtain an order that a domain name should be cancelled or transferred:
(1) the domain name registered by Respondent is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which Complainant has rights; and
(2) Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
(3) the domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
Identical and/or Confusingly Similar
Complainant has shown that, by assignment from BB Games, Inc., it has rights in the XANO mark, registered with the USPTO, namely Reg. No. 4,846,625, registered on November 3, 2015, for "Computer software, namely, computer software for creating, integrating, deploying, publishing, and managing web sites and their content" in International Class 9; and for "Services for websites and web pages, namely, developing, managing, updating and maintaining web application software, websites and web pages", in International Class 42.
It is well accepted that the first element functions primarily as a standing requirement. The standing (or threshold) test for confusing similarity involves a reasoned but relatively straightforward comparison between the Complainant's trademark and the disputed domain name. WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, Third Edition ("WIPO Overview 3.1 "), section 1.7.
The Panel finds Respondent's <xano.ai> domain name to be identical to Complainant's XANO mark, since the inconsequential ".ai" country code top-level domain ("ccTLD") may be ignored under this element. See, for example, Rollerblade, Inc. v. Chris McCrady, WIPO Case No. D2000-0429.
Complainant has established this element.
Rights or Legitimate Interests
(i) before any notice to Respondent of the dispute, the use by Respondent of, or demonstrable preparations to use, the domain name or a name corresponding to the domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services; or
(ii) Respondent (as an individual, business or other organization) has been commonly known by the domain name, even if Respondent has acquired no trademark or service mark rights; or
(iii) Respondent is making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert customers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue.
The <xano.ai> domain name was registered on August 7, 2024, many years after the registration of the XANO mark in the name of BB Games, Inc.; a year before its assignment to Complainant; and just over 6 months before Complainant entered the field of AI. The domain name resolves to a Registrar parking page stating:
"Domain for Sale
Xano.ai
Xano.ai is a bold, brandable domain perfect for AI startups in backend automation, data infrastructure, or no-code/low-code platforms. Sleek and modern – ideal for scalable tech solutions…
Listed with spaceship.com…
Buy now $300,000".
Complainant's website at "www.xano.com" currently states:
"New: How Xano gives agents business context
Build secure, salable backends at AI speed.
Generate APIs, databases, and logic with AI. Xano is the backend platform that lets you build what you need, see what you built, and ship it fast."
These circumstances, together with Complainant's assertions, are sufficient to constitute a prima facie showing of absence of rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name on the part of Respondent. Accordingly, the evidentiary burden shifts to Respondent to show that it does have rights or legitimate interests in the <xano.ai> domain name. See JUUL Labs, Inc. v. Dryx Emerson / KMF Events LTD, FA 1849706 (Forum July 17, 2019).
As noted in UDRP Perspectives ("www.udrpperspectives.org"), section 2.6:
"Speculating in and trading in domain names when done without intent to profit from other's trademarks can in and of itself, constitute a "legitimate interest" under the Policy – even without actually using the domain name in connection with its dictionary meaning.
Speculating in and trading in domain names can indeed constitute a legitimate interest under the Policy. Such a practice may constitute use of the domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services (i.e. the sale of the domain name itself).
Where a Respondent is in the business of investing in domain names, a legitimate interest may be found since the Complainant's arguments as to a lack of a legitimate interest will have been rebutted."
The Panel finds that Respondent, a domain name investor, registered the <xano.ai> domain name with intent to sell it to the general public, as with Respondent's similarly structured domain names <xeno.ai>, <xno.ai>, <celo.ai>, <keta.ai>, <moca.ai>, <nika.ai>, <lalo.ai>, <emil.ai>, <dyce.ai>, <faya.ai>, <kios.ai> and <lilu.ai>.
The Panel finds that Respondent has shown that it has rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name because, as a domain name investor in similarly structured domain names who had previously acquired the <xeno.ai> domain name, Respondent registered and is using the <xano.ai> domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of services, namely the offering of the domain name itself for sale to the general public. See for example typeguard, inc. v. Narendra Ghimire, WIPO Case No. DAI2026-0029, July 13, 2026 (<glide.ai>).
The Panel makes this finding irrespective of whether Respondent might have been aware of BB Games, Inc.'s, XANO mark when Respondent registered the domain name, since Respondent has shown that there are many other registrants of the XANO mark unrelated to Complainant, and that the word "xano" is an ordinary word in Greek and Catalan, and a Portuguese diminutive of the given name Alexandre, used by a professional Portuguese footballer. Based upon the evidence before it, the Panel finds it more likely than not that Respondent selected <xano.ai> for reasons entirely unrelated to Complainant and its use of Xano.
Complainant has failed to establish this element.
Registration and Use in Bad Faith
(i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name; or
(ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct; or
(iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or
(iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.
The circumstances set out above in relation to the second element satisfy the Panel that Respondent did not register the <xano.ai> domain name in bad faith and is not using it in bad faith.
Complainant has failed to establish this element.
Reverse Domain Name Hijacking
Reverse Domain Name Hijacking ("RDNH") is defined in Rule 1 as "using the Policy in bad faith to attempt to deprive a registered domain-name holder of a domain name". Rule 15(e) provides, in part:
"If after considering the submissions the Panel finds that the complaint was brought in bad faith, for example in an attempt at Reverse Domain Name Hijacking or was brought primarily to harass the domain-name holder, the Panel shall declare in its decision that the complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding."
Complainant clearly satisfied the first UDRP element and had a reasonable basis to believe it could also satisfy the second and third elements when filing this complaint. Given that the <xano.ai> domain name resolved to a sales page explicitly marketing the domain as perfect for "AI startups in backend automation, data infrastructure, or no-code/low-code platforms", Complainant had colorable grounds to pursue this proceeding. Even though the domain name was offered to the general public rather than directly to Complainant, the presence of automated content that so closely mirrored Complainant's highly specialized business niche understandably led Complainant to believe it had a valid case for targeting.
Because Complainant initiated this proceeding with a reasonable, good-faith belief in its chances of success, the Panel declines to find that the Complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of this administrative proceeding.
DECISION
Complainant having not established all three elements required under the ICANN Policy, the Panel concludes that relief shall be DENIED.
Accordingly, it is Ordered that the <xano.ai> domain name REMAIN WITH Respondent.
Ho-Hyun Nahm, Esq., Panelist
Professor David E. Sorkin, Panelist
Alan L. Limbury, Panel Chair
Dated: September 18, 2026
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