George Kirikos gets big court victory; judge orders defendant pay costs.
A Canadian court has ordered Micys Company pay $4,512.45 to George Kirikos’(Leap of Faith Financial Services Inc stemming from a UDRP it filed against the domain name Pupa.com.
Micys filed a UDRP against Pupa.com last year with World Intellectual Property Forum. Micys runs the site Pupa.it, where it sells cosmetics and fashion accessories.
Kirikos decided to sue Micys in Canadian court, which halted the UDRP proceedings.
The court determined that Leap of Faith Financial Services Inc. is the rightful owner of the domain and that Micys must pay costs associated with the lawsuit.
Leap was represented by Zak Muscovitch in the UDRP and
Torys LLP in the court action.
A great victory for George and Zak and a precedent setting case for all domainers.
Great Job Guys!
Congratulations to you both!
Thanks. Just for clarity, the judgment and case involved my company (Leap of Faith Financial Services Inc.) and not me personally. Although, I do own 100% of the company.
George, did the other company respond to your suit?
Way to go George!
More a moral victory than a financial one. The thieving company will likely never pay.
Congrats to George and Zak, good job.
Congratulations, George!
Andrew: Nope, it was a default judgment in the Ontario case, see:
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/challenged/
I guess Zak’s superlative UDRP response and the “dream team” (Andrew Bernstein and Sarah Whitmore) of legal eagles at Torys gave them a good sense of the futility of responding.
P.S. Not only did they not respond to the suit, their lawyers (and they had both Italian and Canadian lawyers) wouldn’t even accept service of the lawsuit! We had to serve the other side via the Hague Convention, which was very complicated, expensive, and included translation of the case into Italian!
@George Kirikos
Firstly, congrats!
Could you please clarify what you mean by “wouldn’t even accept service of the lawsuit” (and the subsequent use of the Hague Convention).
My assumption is the ‘Italian and Canadian lawyers’ retained by Micys for the UDRP fILING would not ‘accept service’ or participate/act on behalf of their client when you initiated the court proceedings?
If above is correct, then I imagine the Hague Convention was somehow used to (try to) force those same ‘Italian and Canadian lawyers’ to participate (…although, given it was a default judgment, that suggests despite the use of the Hague Convention, the lawyers/company still did not participate)??
Thanks,
Steve
Steve: When someone initiates a lawsuit, they must serve it on the defendant. Typically if a party already has counsel (e.g. both sides had been communicating via lawyers before a lawsuit was initiated), the lawyers can accept service on behalf of their client, if the client authorizes them to do so, as a matter of courtesy.
In this case, there was no such authorization. This was not about compelling the *lawyers* to participate….just the mechanics of serving their client (because the clock doesn’t start ticking for a response until the defendants are properly served).
Micys still had to be served, so the way to do it by the “rules” was via the Hague Convention (including translating into Italian, having it sent to a registry in Rome, it going to Milan, etc.) For a case filed in May 2012, they didn’t get served until September 18, 2012! I wouldn’t have expected that a large company (the other side claimed to have revenues of 700 million Euros from 2002 to 2011) would engage in such tactics.
Once they got served, the clock started ticking on a response. Once there’s no response (past the deadline to respond), one can move for default judgment (which we did).
So, it’s not about forcing the lawyers to participate. Just an “inside baseball” comment on tactics of the other side.
@George Kirikos
Thanks for the explanation!
Steve