The inside story of a baseless cybersquatting lawsuit.
Imagine that you’re an app developer who has registered a handful of domain names over the years. One day your twitter feed and phone lights up with people discussing how you’re being sued over one of the domain names you own. That’s exactly what happened to Jason Kneen. A new business starting up in 2014 filed a cybersquatting lawsuit against the domain name WorkBetter.com, which he registered way back in 1999. Jason is on the show today to talk about the experience, and you’ll learn what you can go through if this happens to you.
Also: $50,000 settlement after frivolous UDRP, Stolen domain recovered, Google on new TLDs and Happy Birthday .Co.
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Kneen says that an atty contacted him and offered his/her services. This should be an open letter to attys: track UDRPSearch.com, contact respondents, and secure 100K RDNH awards. The award operates to unburden the courts, and courtroom wins serve to forestall unlawful UDRP filings. This is the mechanism to obtain the unbiased application of law to fact within the UDRP. One objective of framers of law is to foresee where corruption can and will seep in. And the Congressional History shows that they saw these unscrupulous plaintiffs/complainants, and paid arbitration panelists, coming ab initio.
Another informative interview, thanks to you Andrew and Jason for your time.
Any civic-minded NY attys might visit the ‘Milly’ UDRP. It was a ‘retroactive bad faith’ holding (domain predates mark use). That is de facto RDNH under the clear language of the Policy. The WIPO Panel flatly subverted the Policy, and in doing so, they triggered this slippery slope, which has cost Kneen thousands and wasted US court resources.
The Milly’ Respondent died 2/18/2013. Complainant deftly filed 3/11/2013 and lied about the content of the site. Email if you need screenshots, including the page before mark use, and the parking page (to which the domain reverted after his death) which was misrepresented in the Complaint. The registrant had in past sold a software company to AOL, and he was no fool.
One would hope to see the 100K RDNH award secured for the Respondent’s surviving heirs: his wife and three children. Their names formed the acronym for his d/b/a, ‘Mrs. JELL-O.’
It is disclosed in the podcast that Kneen effectively hired an attorney to represent him who wasn’t / isn’t admitted to practice before NY Federal Court. According to the podcast, the attorney Keen hired had to “appear” through an attorney admitted to practice before NY Federal Court. So, Keen effectively paid for his attorney to hire an attorney. While the plaintiff probably intended (hoped) for this lawsuit to be as costly as possible (in re the intent of a SLAPP type lawsuit), the plaintiff didn’t force Keen to hire an attorney who wasn’t admitted to practice before NY Federal Court in NYC.
As “strategic” as the lawsuit filed against Keen was, the biggest hole in the whole thing was Keen not being a US citizen. It’s like everything about the lawsuit was fairly “calculated” to be as costly as possible (and to trip up someone not schooled in law) but the whole thing rested on an issue (personal jurisdiction) that The Judge would probably have raised on his own motion if the defendant hadn’t bothered to appear.
I would point out that the fact that the plaintiff somehow knew that Kneen had traveled to the US / NY for a speech is very scary. It’s like Kneen’s activities were being monitored by the plaintiff for some time.
AT THIS POINT, isn’t it clear to all that no one accidentally files “an intent to use trademark application” on a mark similar to someone else’s domain name?
i just listened to this entire interview. very well done! thanks for all you do, andrew — and congrats jason for your win.