Atlanta.com included in UDRP by accident.
My heart skipped a beat today when I saw that Atlanta.com had been served with a domain arbitration notice. But then I quickly figured out that this is some sort of clerical error.
Automobile Atlanta, Inc. filed a case with National Arbitration Forum for six domains including automobileatlanta.com, autoatlanta.net, automobileatlanta.net, dr914.com, and lifeinhighgear.com. Oh yeah, and a minor domain name called Atlanta.com was included in the complaint listed on National Arbitration Forum’s web site.
But the other five domains are owned by a different party than Atlanta.com, which is owned by geo-magnate Skip Hoagland. When I did a little searching I found that this case is a refile of a previous case decided back in January. The one difference in domains this time around is that, instead of AutoAtlanta.com in the first case, this case includes just Atlanta.com. Either the complainant or National Arbitration Forum left off “auto” before the domain. Woops.
I assume that’s easy to fix, since technically an individual case can’t go forward against two different domain owners. But I’m sure it’s causing a headache for Hoagland to get the error fixed.
CS says
Lack of proper due process is a drawback of arbitration run by private org’s like NAF. When they were doing credit card arbitrations, people who didn’t even have an account w/the credit card co. were being ruled against. The MN Attorney General sued NAF for having financial ties w/entities it did supposedly ‘neutral’ arbitrations for. A lot can be found about the problems of arbitration on Public Citizen, citizen.org as well as another site of theirs, fairarbitrationnow.org I learned about the problems of private, industry run arbitration during years with a consumer organization that dealt w/housing issues. Many homeowners were reporting seriously flawed procedures in arbitration w/builders and warranty co’s. If not for the problems in employment arbitration clauses, and credit card arbitration clauses, it might not have gotten much press. Even now, the mainstream media is largely ignoring this important issue. Consumers rarely find out about arbitration until it’s too late; many do not even realize when there’s an arbitration clause in a contract they lose their legal rights.