Company goes after Viking.org in arbitration only to find out the real reason the owner didn’t want to sell it.
Viking Office Products, Inc., an affiliate of Office Depot, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a bizarre case involving Viking.org.
The office products company filed for arbitration with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name, and painted registrant Natasha Flaherty as a cybersquatter who would only consider selling the domain name if she was offered a lot of money.
They argued:
Respondent has registered the domain name and held it without using it in an apparent attempt to gain a “six or seven figure†windfall. Respondent has been the sole registrant of the viking.org domain name for approximately 1.5 years and has merely held the domain name passively. Such passive holding supports a finding of bad faith registration and use.
But there was a good reason Flaherty wasn’t interesting in selling the domain name for cheap — it was owned by her late husband Paul A. Flaherty. Paul is an inventor of Altavista, one of the first web search engines. He died suddenly in 2006 at the age of 42.
Natasha and Paul used the domain name throughout their marriage for email and Paul used it as a personal web site. When Paul died the domain name was transferred to Natasha.
Viking Office Products hired some IP experts to reach out to Natasha about buying the domain, but they allegedly never mentioned they were working on behalf of the company and refused to answer the question.
After receiving Natasha’s response to the UDRP, Viking stated:
If the Respondent had said to the investigators what she is now saying to the Panel, namely that she has a sentimental attachment to the domain name and that she has some (undefined) free speech use in mind for the domain name and that it was therefore not for sale, that would have ended the matter.
But it then said that her demands for 7 or 8 figures showed her bad faith intent.
Now I can understand how Viking’s lawyers may not have known the entire story behind the domain name when they filed this case. But after receiving the response, and admitting that they would have dropped the issue had they known the whole story, that’s when it’s time to drop the case so you don’t embarrass yourself.
Instead they proceeded and lost.
Panelist Daniel B. Banks found against the office products company on all three aspects of UDRP and found it guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. (Banks was correct in his overall decision, although finding that the domain wasn’t confusingly similar to Viking because it was generic is at odds with most UDRP decisions.)
Harry Flowers says
NOW THAT IS DIRRRRTTTTTYYYY BUSINESS IMO !!!!!
So basically it appears on the surface that Office Depot, Viking Office Products, and Ross Bulla … the president at The Treadstone Group, Inc. are complicit in trying to steal a domain name from a little old lady that happens to be a widow !
Crying shame dirty business IMO. I hope they all get their names tarnished for what seems to be a crooked game of stealing domain names.
Ross Bulla is a counter terrorism expert among other things according to his LinkedIn Page. This is who they hire to take a domain name from a rightful domain owner?
It makes me want to puke how dirty, scummy, rotten, and even evil this is.
Karma ! What comes around goes around guys. You’ll get yours for trying to apparently steal this domain though a Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.
All three should write a letter of apology to this widow !
Now it’s time to sue them for the RDNH. John Berryhill to the rescue!
Office Depot just lost my biz also, btw.
Ross Bulla , you should have known better being as smart as your Linked In page shows you to be. This is what you get paid to do? God, I could not sleep at night if it was me.
Dirty, dirty, dirty!
John Berryhill says
Paul McGrady is going after widows now, is he?
Stay classy, Paul.
bob vaughan says
Please don’t call Natasha “old”. She isn’t.
She is several years younger than Paul, who would be 47 if he was still alive today.
Frantisek Mrazek says
“Ross Bulla”. Should rename himself as “Ross Bully”.