Godfather of Soul’s domain name can stay with management company.
The estate of James Brown has lost a domain arbitration case for the domain name JamesBrown.com.
The domain is owned by LAC Management, Inc., which manages “RJ & The James Brown Bandâ€. LAC argued that James Brown gave at least his tacit consent for it to register the domain name. In its pleadings, the estate even admitted that Brown may have consented to the domain registration while he was alive.
The estate made a number of legal arguments that aren’t typically considered by a UDRP panel and the panel decided to ignore them.
That makes sense. Even if the estate does have a legal argument to get this domain name, it’s certainly too complex to be handled by the UDRP mechanism.
LAC Management was represented by Ari Goldberger of ESQwire.com.
rs says
here is the quote from ICANN’s second staff report on the UDRP (sec 4.1):
The policy relegates all “legitimate” disputes–such as those where both disputants had longstanding trademark rights in the name when it was registered as a domain name–to the courts; only cases of abusive registrations are intended to be subject to the streamlined administrative dispute-resolution procedure.
Kevin Davis says
I got to work with James Brown @ The House Of Blues in Myrtle Beach in 94 Cool cat and best show I ever saw.
rs says
I see a big problem with the way this decision was rendered. Once they identify that there are legitimate issues surrounding litigation the arbitration must stop right there because it is outside the scope of UDRP. Instead they “ignored” the arguments and went ahead anyway..
“Complainant has argued various legal points pursuant to agency law as they may apply to Respondent’s status as the agent for Mr. James Brown and estate law as it applies to the evidence presented by Respondent. The Panel holds that the instant dispute is governed by the UDRP and not any agency, estate or evidence laws, and as such, the Panel has disregarded these arguments. While Policy ¶ 4(k) allows the parties to litigate these points in court, the Panel finds that, even though these types of arguments may be suitable in a court litigation context, they are not applicable to this arbitration proceeding which is limited to the scope of the UDRP and its elements.”