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This WIPO panelist forgot something

by — Policy & Law 4 Comments

Vodacom filed dead-on-arrival case and domain owner said it was an abuse of the policy, but…

A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panelist has correctly found in favor of the registrant of VideoPlay.com, but he forgot something: to find the Complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

Vodacom (Pty) Ltd and Vodafone Group PLC filed the dispute against the owner of the domain who registered it in 2001. The earliest Vodafone can show any use of the term Video Play is 2014, according to the decision.

The Complainants tried to make a bad faith argument based on a single link on the site in 2003 pointing to what it says was an illegal download site. That’s a stretch…especially since the Complainant’s Video Play service didn’t exist until a decade later!

The domain registrant alleged that the Complainant “is misusing the UDRP system in an attempt to misappropriate the disputed domain name.”

For some reason, panelist Frederick Abbott did not formally decide on the issue of reverse domain name hijacking despite finding that the case was a bad one:

The Panel understands that Complainant thinks it would be a good idea to own the disputed domain name since it presumably has a commercial value to Complainant. But the Policy is not designed to accord rights to parties that think they have better uses for domain names than existing domain name registrants. Before an enterprise launches a commercial venture, it would be wise to investigate whether a domain name is available, or how much it might cost to purchase from a prior registrant.

 

Tina Dam sues over .Music, reveals investment

by — Policy & Law 2 Comments

Dam, who worked on new TLD applications, claims she has been cut out of equity ownership of .Music top level domain.

.Music top level domain logo

Former ICANN staffer Tina Dam, who left the non-profit to work with Constantine Roussos on new top level domains, is now suing Roussos and related companies.

Dam claims that she owned half the shares of MYTLD, a company formed with Roussos, which in turn was due to own a portion of DotMusic Ltd through an agreement between the companies.

The lawsuit alleges that Roussos later tried to renegotiate the deal but Dam didn’t sign the updated agreement.

Roussos later claimed that he considered MYTLD inactive and dissolved.

DotMusic ultimately prevailed in the heavyweight battle to get .Music, defeating companies including Amazon and Google.

Dam believes she has been cut out of ownership of some of the DotMusic equity. Her lawsuit (pdf), filed in Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles in July, states 15 causes of action.

The lawsuit also discloses how DotMusic might have managed to stay in the hunt against big companies for so long and ultimately prevail. It includes a signed investment agreement between one of Roussos’ companies and Tudor T & Credit Union Societe. Under the terms of the agreement, Tudor T would invest $5 million in DotMusic for a 10% share in the company, valuing it at $50 million. [Update: Lawyers representing Roussos and the related companies told Domain Name Wire that no investmetns were ever made and the agreement was not fully executed.]

Tudor T also bought a majority interest in DotSong and DotOnline for a combined $5 million, according to the agreement. Other companies won those contention sets.

The DotMusic valuation was based on lofty expectations that many new top level domain applicants had at the time. Roussos forecasted $62 million in revenue from the first year of .Music including over $35 million of sunrise revenue.

Lawyers for Roussons and related entities released the following statement to Domain Name Wire:

Mr. Roussos intends to vigorously defend against the allegations set forth in the complaint.  These claims have no merit and we are confident the case will be resolved in our favor.

11 end user domain name sales at Uniregistry

by — Domain Sales 3 Comments

Here are 11 domains that end users bought through Uniregistry recently.

Screenshot of the Veggie app for Vegas

The creators of the Veggie app for Vegans bought Veggie.com.

Uniregistry is providing its top 20 public sales each week. I reviewed the lists from the past two weeks to find the end user domain sales. I’m sure there are more, but many of the domains have obscured Whois records and don’t resolve to a website yet.

Veggie.com $25,000 – Skanerka sp. z o. o. is a Polish company that offers the Veggie app for vegans. The .com forwards to its website at Veggie.pl.

Paperflow.com $11,000 – Bilagscan is a document scanning technology company. I suspect it is either rebranding or this will be the name of a new product.

GoldenMaple.com $7,000 – The Dubai buyer identifies itself as Golden Maple. The site resolves to a GoDaddy holding page.

Laylo.com $7,000 – The Whois record shows only that the registrant is in California. I’m betting it’s the guy who applied for the Laylo trademark for two (oddly different) classes of service. He owns Laylo.co and Laylo.fm.

ReddingInsurance.com $6,000 – A Boise, Idaho insurance company named after its owner, LeRoy Redding. It forwards to his website EZInsurance.com.

Ondina.com $5,300 – The buyer is technology consulting company Consul S.r.l.. I’m not sure what the domain means to it.

ArmyAnts.com $5,000 – Wooyang Co, Ltd sells petrochemical, power, and fine chemical plant equipment. I’m not sure why it wants this domain.

Accorn.com $5,000 – Accorn is a venture capital group within a company called Spirit Invest.

TheCaribou.com $5,000 – TI Media owns a number of publications. The Caribou might be the next.

FabricByTheYard.com $4,800 – Missouri Quilt Company is forwarding this domain to its website.

WireBasket.com $4,000 – This is an exact match product name for the owners of RackAndShelf.com, a site that sells exactly what its domain suggests.

Chrysler crashes its dot-brand domain names

by — Uncategorized 5 Comments

Company pulls all but one of its dot-brands; other companies join the withdrawing party.

Picture of toy matchbox-style cars in a crash. Grey convertible and yellow coupe.

Fiat Chrysler pulls all but one of its dot-brand domain names.

Fiat Chrysler is among the companies dropping many of its dot-brand domain names.

ICANN published 13 more termination notices for top level domain names that match the brands of their owners.

The companies voluntarily decided to terminate their .brand domains. The domains include:

  • .Uconnect, .SRT, .Mopar, .Dodge, .Chrysler (Fiat Chrysler)
  • .Liasion (Liaison Technologies)
  • .Lancome (L’Oreal)
  • .Telefonica and .Movistar (Telefonica S.A.)
  • .Piaget, .Cartier (Richemont)
  • .Warman (Weir Group)
  • .Ladbrokes (Ladbrokes International PLC)

Fiat Chrysler still has .jeep, but the only .jeep domain in Google is the obligatory nic.jeep.

Scratch.org settlement breaks down

by — Policy & Law 10 Comments

$20,000 agreement falls through.

Picture of a judge's gavel with the word "settlement" below it, with two red lines crossing out the word "settlement"

A settlement to resolve a dispute over the domain name Scratch.org has fallen apart.

Scratch Foundation, a non-profit created at MIT, filed a cybersquatting lawsuit against the domain name Scratch.org in January.

It was an in rem case against the domain, but Ravi Lahoti responded to the dispute saying that he was the owner of the domain. He also said that he was the original registrant of the domain dating to 1998. (Historical Whois records seem to bear out.)

This was before Scratch Foundation existed, but the group continued with its case. It even issued a subpoena to a domain registrar asking for information on more of Lahoti’s domains. Scratch Foundation is trying to paint a picture of Lahoti as a serial cybersquatter and wants information about his other domains and revenue generated from them.

The catch, as I see it, is that it would be impossible for Scratch Foundation to show that Scratch.org was registered in bad faith since Lahoti registered it well before the non-profit existed. Even if Lahoti has registered other domains in bad faith, it seems a stretch to say that about Scratch.org.

The two parties entered into settlement negotiations in which Lahoti would transfer the domain to Scratch Foundation for $20,000. As part of this, Scratch Foundation dropped discovery related to Lahoti’s other domains.

Now it gets to a he said, she said after the settlement apparently broke down.

Scratch Foundation says the settlement was agreed to and Lahoti broke it. Lahoti says that it was agreed to in principle, but he wasn’t happy with some of the final language and provisions in the agreement.

Following the breakdown, Scratch Foundation is moving forward with its demand for the data about Lahoti’s other domains.