Wireless products company in China loses domain in suspicious circumstances; files UDRP to get it back.
Wireless company Shenzhen AEE Technology Co., Ltd has filed a UDRP for the domain name AEE.com.
But before you question this filing for a three letter domain name, there are some interesting circumstances surrounding this domain name. You can discover them with the help of DomainTools’ historical whois.
Shenzhen AEE Technology Co., Ltd owned the domain name until early July of this year. The domain name was registered at Name.com NameCheap.com and didn’t expire until 2015. Then on July 11 the domain was suddenly transferred to eNom and placed under whois proxy.
On October 21 the domain shifted to Dynadot. It was protected with a whois privacy service and showed Dennis Vink as the owner. The next day the named registrant using the privacy service changed to Alvaro Bernal.
[Update: I originally wrote that the domain was at Name.com. It was actually NameCheap, an eNom reseller. It then transferred to another eNom account (non-NameCheap) before being transferred to Dynadot.]
The web site now has new blog with the title: “AEE Alvaro’s Enchanting Experiences”.
Yep, this whole thing smells a bit fishy.
That is indeed very very fishy.
Maybe we’ll hear more about the details in the future.
Its sounds like the circumstances are outside of UDRP scope and should really go to the courts.
@ Lassy – perhaps, although previous UDRP panels have proceeded in cases like this to return three letter domains.
It may have been stolen as a result of registrant account hack. Or ex-employee or another party who actually had control of the registrant account. Hopefully, a decision will come down so we can see what complainant alleged.
If is was stolen it is outside the sope of the UDRP. It is also not clear the AEE is a trademark (a company name is not automatically a TM). The providers may have accepted these cases anyway and the arbitrators ruled anyway but that type of activity is corrupting the system. The arbitrators have circumvented the policy issued decisions because they think it is the right thing to do. However, the decisions are then used under other circumstances so it screws up the whole system.
If I has a domain stolen I would call the Police so there is a report generated. Then try the transfer dispute policy that registrars use.
I found the transfer dispute policy. It is interesting to note that these disputes have an appeal mechanism.
http://www.icann.org/en/transfers/dispute-policy-12jul04.htm
It appears there is a little confusion regarding the registrar history of aee.com. We have confirmed with the registry that the domain has never been registered through Name.com. We would do our best to assist the registrant through the recovery process if we were notified that the domain had been stolen.
Thanks,
Scott McBreen
Domain Operations Manager
Name.com
Thanks Scott and apologies. I’ve fixed this to show it was NameCheap.
In a case like this, by the time it got to Dynadot would there be much a registrar like you could do (if you were the original registrar) since it has already transferred to the second registrar?
Most likely the email [email protected] was compromised and the domain was stolen, then flipped a couple of times.
Name.com tries to be an advocate for its customers whenever possible. We have found that opening lines of communication with other registrars often produces the desired result for the rightful owner of the domain.
The domain appears to have a lot of history to it, more than you’d expect for a simple domain hijacking case. It seems for years the domain wasn’t owned by the company, if ever at all. Either way, UDRP isn’t the procedure to follow. It’s the domain (ha ha) of the court. If the domain has been flipped a couple of times like the historical whois suggests the company is really to blame for not taking appropiate action sooner to prevent the domain from going anywhere.