Online casino files UDRP, but when was it actually founded?
PokerHost.com has filed a UDRP complaint with WIPO to get the domain name PokerHost.NET. If you’re not familiar with the online poker industry, many poker sites use the .net version of their name for advertising. The .net site actually doesn’t allow real money betting and is either a free version or tutorial site, so it can be advertised on TV. Of course the short term goal is for people to type in .com instead, and the long term goal is to convert free players into paying players.
Russ “Dutch†Boyd registered PokerHost.net July 14, 2004. The company that runs PokerHost.com registered the domain name in 2002. But as you’ll see below, it didn’t launch its online casino until after Boyd registered the domain.
Boyd describes “poker host” as a generic term and points to plenty of evidence suggesting that. He says he registered the domain name in 2004 when he traveled to Florida to host a TV pilot called Holdem or Foldem. Boyd is one of 600 World Series of Poker bracelet holders.
But the brunt of Boyd’s defense in the UDRP is that he registered the domain name before he could have had any idea that PokerHost.com was going to be an online casino or a trademark.
In PokerHost.com’s complaint, it writes:
Complainant first began use of its domain name and the POKERHOST.COM mark in February 2002. Printouts of the front page of Complainant’s website and the corresponding WhoIs information are attached as Exhibit 5.
This is disingenuous at best. The “printout” it provided was of the PokerHost.com site in 2008. And if you look back in time you’ll find that the .com site didn’t exist when Boyd registered the domain name. Boyd looked on Archive.org and found the first “real use” of the domain name on October 24, 2004. At that time a message on the site said the casino would open in December. (Archive.org confirms that it didn’t actually open until January 2005.)
Up until that date various holding pages were on the site, including a standard error page:
So one thing is clear. Despite what the company claimed as fact in its UDRP — that it “began use of its domain name and the POKERHOST.COM mark in February 2002” — it didn’t start using the domain name for its casino until after Boyd registered the domain. Regardless of the other facts in this case, it’s frustrating to see companies and their lawyers fudging dates in UDRPs and requiring the respondent to discover these falsehoods.
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