Man in the home of the Alamo sues after losing UDRP for Alamo domain name.
A San Antonio man has sued Vanguard Trademark Holdings USA LLC, which manages the Alamo car rental trademarks, after losing a UDRP for the domain name AlamoClub.com.
John K. Rivenburgh found himself on the losing end of a decision handed down by National Arbitration Forum panelist Maninder Singh. If you read the complaint, you’ll find Rivenburgh’s claimed use of the domain rather plausible. After all, he lives in the home of the Alamo. He even created a site on the domain name that had absolutely nothing to do with the car rental company.
Nevertheless, Singh found against Rivenburgh. Vanguard said the site was showing ads related to car rentals, but that’s a stretch (more on that in a post later tonight).
Rivenburgh says the site receives little traffic.
The suit (pdf) asks for the judge to declare that Rivenburgh is the rightful owner of the domain name.
The suit should halt the transfer of the domain name.
UDRP has become a coin toss, innocent owners are being bullied by incoherent panel members…
Sounds like a terrible decision. It’s been said before – if you value your name request three arbitrators.
Typical behavior from these guys – they go after anything with the string “alamo” in it even if it has nothing to do with cars (AlAmore.com, etc)
Maninder Singh appears to be an idiot panelist. All his decisions where he is the sole panelist favor the complainant.
He should be banned from UDRP/WIPO panels.
He has repeatedly shown that he is a totally incompetent panelist who just hates the respondents and never give any weight to respondents arguments.
He always have moronic and flawed decisions which make absolutely no sense.
Time to file a complaint against Maninder Singh.
He does NOT follow the UDRP procedures/guidelines and just gives domains to the complainant.
My approach these days is to file a lawsuit on any domain I value for any UDRP BEFORE it goes to the UDRP process, and then make the losing party pay for my legal expenses.