It was also fair for Pool to let the auction proceed. Heck, if I could stop all of your auctions by merely picking up the phone and telling you I had a trademark, you’d be out of business.

[...] Name Wire is reporting on two important UDRP decisions that were announced in the past two days. Shoppers.com and Ace.com were both retained by the current owners after large companies filed a complaint for [...]

[...] Name Wire is reporting on two important UDRP decisions that were announced in the past two days. Shoppers.com and Ace.com were both retained by the current owners after large companies filed a complaint for [...]

[...] Name Wire is reporting on two important UDRP decisions that were announced in the past two days. Shoppers.com and Ace.com were both retained by the current owners after large companies filed a complaint for [...]

[...] Name Wire is reporting on two important UDRP decisions that were announced in the past two days. Shoppers.com and Ace.com were both retained by the current owners after large companies filed a complaint for [...]

[...] Name Wire is reporting on two important UDRP decisions that were announced in the past two days. Shoppers.com and Ace.com were both retained by the current owners after large companies filed a complaint for [...]

I’d like to provide a bit of clarification for your readers in regards to the snippet of information drawn from the NAF decision that has been included in your blog posting. Note that this paragraph was drawn from the Complainant’s submission and reflects “their side of the story”. There are a number of very key issues related to this particular incident that bear clarifying. First, the complainant made reference to Pool being placed on notice of their trademark rights. In fact, our legal counsel was informed, by telephone, by one of the auction participants while the auction was progressing that they had a trademark claim and Pool should stop the auction. It is not Pool’s practice to arbitrarily stop an auction based on a bare assertion of trademark or other prior rights. Particularly when the assertion is issued by one of the auction participants themselves. Our customers take great care in selecting the domain names they want to secure and would be extremely upset if we simply withdrew names from availability because some other bidder suggested they had a prior right. This is particularly true for a generic name like “shoppers.com”.

The UDRP process is one that Pool.com endorses and requires all of our customers to respect. Our rights and powers are no greater than our registrar partners, who have neither the authority nor the responsibility to arbitrate in prior right issues. Clearly, the UDRP process is well established to meet these goals. We believe that it would be unfair to our customers to allow auctions to be manipulated through informal claims of prior rights.

In this case, we were informed by the registrar that held the domain that a UDRP complaint had been filed both after the completion of the auction and registration of the domain in the name of the auction winner. On receipt of this notice, we advised the winning bidder and considering the generic nature of the name, the winning bidder opted to vigorously defend its right to the domain. And while having to proceed through a UDRP filing, I believe the auction winner is satisfied with this final outcome. They have obtained an exceptional name at what I believe is an even more exceptional price.

One final point relates to a comment made by the panel which further supports the actions taken by Pool.com in this auction. The panel decision states:

“Contrary to the Complainant’s assertions, trademark law did not in any way prevent the auction of this domain. It does not give a mark owner exclusive right against the world, especially in regard to common words. Exclusive rights belong only to famous or coined marks and this one is neither. Further, famous marks give exclusive rights only in the jurisdiction where they are famous.”

I welcome comments and questions from your readership Andrew and would concur with your observation that the actions taken by the Complainant in this case could easily be viewed as reverse domain name hijacking, an issue which the panel chose not to address.

Richard Schreier
CEO, Pool.com