Woman Says She Threw Away Business Over $483 Domain Name
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
How a $483 domain name turned into an expensive lawsuit.
I read a lot of lawsuit filings, and many of them leave me scratching my head. Here’s a case in point.
In July, an Lorie Price of Indiana filed a lawsuit against a domain owner along with Oversee.net and DomainSponsor. She alleges that the domain owner is infringing her trademark with the domain name N2Touch.com.
Indeed, Price does appear to have Indiana rights to the term N2Touch. In fact, she used the domain name until she forgot to renew it, at which point the new owner registered the domain name. She contacted the new owner inquiring about the domain, and it was allegedly offered for sale for $483.00. She declined.
According to the lawsuit, the Price’s massage business and the massage referral business previously run on N2Touch.com has withered since the defendants “took control of the name”, thereby forcing her to seek employment outside of Indiana.
Although it’s hard to know the personal circumstances of the plaintiff, something is wrong here.
You would really jeopardize your entire business over $483?
Perhaps it’s on principle that she didn’t buy the domain, but there are other problems. The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff let the domain lapse in 2008. It actually expired in April 2007. If the loss of the domain name was enough to cause you to basically lose your business, wouldn’t you know exactly when that occurred? And if it was that dramatic, you’d think you’d either pay the $483 or, if it was a matter of principle, file for domain arbitration to get the domain back for a couple grand.
Instead, Price has apparently lost substantial business to the point that she decided to file an expensive lawsuit. (And her lawyers are very confused about domain names and the relationship between the owner and Oversee, and who actually owns the domain. But I won’t go into that here.)
The lawsuit doesn’t say how much Price is seeking in damages, but I suspect it’s a lot.
If you’re curious, here’s a copy of the lawsuit (large pdf).
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Tags: lawsuits
So she goes to the parked domain, types in her own personal name, and searches it several times in order to make her name show up in the related links, and then claims they targeted her? I wonder if that’s what happened.
Good example of Darwin’s Law.
Woman Says She Threw Away Business Over $483 Domain Name – http://tinyurl.com/yhjj55m
Sounds like she has a good chance of making her loss even larger low with the legal fees.
Appreciate the title. It just made me click to read more. If it was something like “Women sues domainer” or something similar, I would not have clicked to read. A title can make the difference.
Ditto on the title.
She is SOL, or should be…rules are pretty standard and upfront in my view.
Shell out the cash and treat it as tuition for a school course that you will remember from that point forward.
Hijacked.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she won though. A depressing thought…
Funny how so many people these days think that when they screw up, someone else should be punished. Ms. Lorie Price of Indiana is just another example of an epic fail.
I actually got into the other side of the situation in an interesting case myself.
I bought some domains from Godaddy Auctions, and then one owner actually reached out to me politely asking that he wants the domain name back, and I honestly complied, asking him to compensate me back for the $15 I paid for the domain+renewal. He agreed. I transferred the domain name and then he says he will have to renew the domain name for another year soon, so he does not want to pay me as well as Godaddy. It was just $15, so I kinda let go (as if I had any other options), but it seems like not everybody sticks by their word. As a matter of fact, the guy is well known in Affiliate Marketing, but no biggie, I am not gonna name Names.
Sumit – a well known affiliate marketer won’t cough up $15? Times must be tough.
Well if i buy a domain and they want it back it’s gonna cost them no matter what,i am a business not a charity.
This case sucks and anywhere else in the world it would never of got to a court case only in the U.s.A as they say !
@Sumit – Name names bro. We need to know who to avoid, and who is a loser.
This lady obviously let her domain expire, then remembered an important fact that thousands of companies and individuals seem to forget:
“YOUR DOMAIN NAME/S ARE YOUR BUSINESS ONLINE”
Lame, but scary that after a decade of domain promotion, incredible domain sale prices, people STILL don’t get it about the value of a domain name. I hope that the education of the public about domains is exponential in the coming months/years.
Heh, at least she has something possibly to demonstrate. Possibly, anyway.
Wait ’til you read the eartheye thingie in NamePros. It’ll probably make you laugh your butt off your behind, heh.
It seems that the “address” of N2touch.com is not the only problem here. The fact that this address is used for on-line searching does not take away from the fact the business is still there. Maybe in written form in the newspapers, flyers, business cards, etc….. The “Trademarked” name should have been researched by the re-seller before they re-sold it. Maybe then they could have re-sold it to the original owner for the same amount they sold it to the second owner. If I trademarked my business name, I would hope that name would be protected. They should not have put the second owner in that predicament. I wonder if other Domain sellers sell Trademarked names….., address available or not?
Sounds like I should have become a lawyer. Between this person, the paper snowflakes idiot, and lots of others idiots, there are a non-trivial number of people willing to throw money at lawyers instead of making sensible decisions for their business and associated domain names.