There’s a Lot of B.S. Around BS.com
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
Domain name at center of lawsuit and WIPO action.
The previous owner of BS.com failed to recover the domain in a WIPO arbitration. In a decision dated September 1, the three person panel found that the complainant failed to prove it had a trademark for the term “BS”.
But there’s more to the story. The complainant once owned the domain name from 1997 until 2003. In 2003 the domain name was acquired by Hazan Ozdemir. In 2005 the complainant filed a lawsuit claiming Ozdemir stole the domain name. The lawsuit was struck out for want of prosecution in June 2007. (That means basically the judge felt the prosecution wasn’t moving forward adequately with the case.)
The respondent in this case, EUROPREMIUM LTD, claims it acquired the domain name in September 2007. The complainant alleges that EUROPREMIUM may actually be Ozdemir.
In November of last year EUROPREMIUM emailed the complainant about acquiring the domain name and said it would sell the domain for $290,000, which it said was the price it paid to acquire the domain name. EUROPREMIUM also said that it was aware of the legal proceedings and that they had been struck out.
Then in June of 2008 the respondent said it would sell the domain for $175,000, now claiming that this was the price it paid for the domain name.
It’s hard to tell if EUROPREMIUM is telling the truth, but there’s certainly a lot of B.S. going on here.
Wait. I’m confused.
What a mess!
Yup. Lots of BS going around.
Hats off to Eric Menhardt of Cyberlaw for defending that one. No doubt took a lot of BS.
While at it, Andrew, read the ContinentalCasualty.com UDRP. I don’t know which of them is possibly more laughable.
[I'm posting this comment on behalf of the current owner, who was having difficulty getting the comment to post.]
Sir, are you a lawyer? This is no laughing matter. We purchased the domain fair and square and these people took us through hell, threats at 3 in the morning, threats in emails, e.t.c. They had 2 years to prove their ownership in Dade County Court and believe me they sold that domain! The domain was at Network Solutions for over a year before this whole caper started in 2005. They had over 30 “BS” anexe’s in this Wipo/Udrp compared to our 8. Please dont point fingures when you dont know the whole story.
Here are the court docs. on Flickr.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27929627@N02/2604929178/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27929627@N02/2604099841/
As everybody already knows, the history goes like this, the domain was purchased by a man named Alpaslan Altunkopru and his partner Mr. Hakan Ozdemir (his email is dnsrole@redwhitearmy.com)from a company called Get Useful or something in March of 2004 through through Afternic, after that, his partner Mr. Hakan Ozdemir purchased Mr.Altunkopru’s share in the domain (his email is hakan@webname.com, it used to be msavas@caths.co.uk but you have to pay for that every year , as he explained, and he didn’t renew the account and somebody else registered it). He transferred the domain to Godaddy. After a few months had passed (in June) the former owner is now saying that he never sold it but that it was taken from him (not true, since he tried 10 times to buy the domain back from Mr. Ozdemir by phone and email, but after 3 months of NO’S he figured Mr. Ozdemir was not selling, he goes to court) and sues EVERYBODY, including Godaddy, Afternic, Hakan Ozdemir, and you would not believe it but he also sues’ BS.COM as a separate entity.
The whole case goes on for more then 2 years when Mr. Ozdemir and everybody else finally receive a judgment from the judge that the case is dismissed in the middle of 2007, and after getting it out of the Godaddy, he sold the domain to us after 3 months of negotiations and we transferred it to Key-Systems. We wanted to do a Social Network-Blog site on various “BS” (bullshit) that you find around the net or some sort of British Sports site but didn’t get around to it. My lawyer checked this whole thing out with everybody before we bought it, Network Solutions, Godaddy, Afternic, Alpaslan Altunkopru, my lawyer even went up to Dade County himself to get the documents that I put on Flickr. We never had any problems, emails, phone calls or anything after we bought the domain until we started getting threats from these Pick’s from Hungary to sell the domain back to them a few months after buying it. They even offered to buy it from us through http://www.escrow.com at half of what we paid for it , now does that sound like people who had their domain stolen? Im sending you the links to the respected Dade County Miami Court’s and Judge’s rulings, anybody can also discuss this case with the the clerk on duty at the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Miami-Dade County Courts, the number of the clerk on duty is (305) 275-1155. You can also enter the case number in their automated system and will hear that the case was dismissed. When the computer asks you for the case number it will ask only for the 05-12064 number since the last CA-01—SECTION 23 (2007) and the CA-23 (2005) are the same thing! And you all know the WIPO outcome. We had payment and document copies of swift transfers for all payments ever done and for all parties ever involved. I didnt want to write here, but it just breaks my heart to see this kind of “BS” concerning our domain after we had to go through all that.