Strangely enough, given that the domain is in active use for a legitimate business, they failed to respond to the UDRP case, which seems to indicate bad management or inadequate legal counsel on the part of that company. Fortunately for them, the panelist found the complainant to be even more incompetent, as they provided facts in their complaint that actually undermined their own claims that the respondent lacked rights or legitimate interest in the domain and had registered it in bad faith.

In the complaint, the British agency (which filed the complaint in its own name, leaving Her Majesty out of it, unlike the recent newzealand.com case) revealed company registration information from Pennsylvania that showed that the respondent was legally registered as a corporation in the name of DVL Automation. It was nice of them to volunteer this information given that the respondent failed to respond; if they had left it out, maybe they would have won, given how panelists are inclined to construe all unknown facts against a defaulting respondent. The complainant further volunteered comments regarding the content of the Web site at the domain in question, which certainly appears to be a legitimate business site. Panelists are divided over whether it's proper for a panelist to do independent investigation of their own (e.g., look to see what site is at a given address, or search trademark records) or if they should be like juries, learning only facts brought before them in the case; in this case, all the relevant information was given the panelist by the complainant.

The outcome was that the respondent kept the domain, and a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking was made (an extreme rarity, especially in cases where the respondent didn't specifically request this ruling; in fact, some panelists have given rulings where they indicated that they thought a complaint was in bad faith but still declined to find RDNH because they weren't specifically asked to do so).

The panelist showed particular scorn for the complainant's assertion that it was "inconceivable" that the respondent hadn't heard of them, since they were a highly famous driver's licence and vehicle registration agency. According to the panelist, it's perfectly reasonable that an American respondent would in fact be unaware of the names and abbreviations of such agencies outside their home state. This is very reasonable to me; I'm not even entirely sure, offhand, what my own state's licensing agency is called (despite all the time wasted in line getting my license and registration), let alone those of other states and countries.