College Hunks and Strong Students fight in court after UDRP

A muscular lawsuit.

This lawsuit creates and amusing visual.

Strong Students Moving, Inc. has sued (pdf) College Hunks Hauling Junk after the former lost a domain to the latter through a UDRP case.

Shaun Robinson of Strong Students Moving, Inc. alleges that he registered the domain name collegehunksmoving.com while he was negotiating with College Hunks Hauling Junk to form a new business venture. The business deal didn’t go through, and earlier this year College Hunks filed a UDRP against Strong Students for the domain. College Hunks won the case, but this lawsuit will halt the transfer of the domain name.

Strong Students Moving is suing for declaratory judgment that the registration was in good faith and is asking for cancellation of the defendant’s trademark registrations. But it goes a bit further: Strong Students is suing for damages for “Intentional Interference with Business/Economic Relations” over the UDRP. Strong Students alleges that his business has suffered because he had to spend time defending the domain.

I suppose that makes sense. But there’s another allegation that is puzzling:

Defendant intentionally interfered with SSM’s existing or potential economic relations for the improper purpose of:
(a) Benefiting from the goodwill built in the Disputed Domain and SSM’s IP in the form of direct traffic to the Disputed Domain; and/or
(b) Depriving the Plaintiff of funds needing to contract with others through malicious litigation; and/or
(c) Reselling the Disputed Domain and the goodwill SSM built into the Disputed Domain.

I guess “potential economic relations” is the keyword here. At least according to the UDRP dispute, the domain name was never active beyond a registrar holding page. I’m not sure what goodwill was built into the domain.