Social media company files silly cybersquatting complaint against Google and loses despite no response.
Social Status, Inc. filed a cybersquatting complaint under UDRP against Google over the domain name SocialStatus.com. Google prevailed even though it didn’t bother to respond to the dispute.
Google is the second large company to win a UDRP despite not filing a response in the past couple weeks. WebMD.com won a case over IVI.com without a response.
In the SocialStatus.com case, the complainant was way out of line. It admitted that Google didn’t register the domain in bad faith. But the panelist didn’t even get that far: he found that Social Status didn’t show it had trademark rights in the name. That was easy since the complainant based its claim on filing for a trademark.
I really hope Social Status, Inc. wasn’t represented by a lawyer.
Social Status, Inc. uses the matching .io domain name. Google got the domain name when it acquired Slide in 2010.
Google has responded to UDRPs in the past, so I’m curious why it didn’t respond to this case and why WebMD didn’t respond to its case. Surely they are getting notice? Have they just decided they’ll win these cases without responding, or that they can always file a lawsuit to block the transfer?
jaybuk says
Hmmm, maybe the best response to a frivolous UDRP action is simply not to respond and see how the case plays out in kangaroo court. If the complainant prevails, simply slap them with a federal lawsuit. I like it.
Nick says
Large Corporations and little guys don’t get the same benefit of the doubt
C.S. Watch says
What if these domains carried high-traffic for the respondent company, or were aftermarket purchases costing millions, or were a family’s primary investment asset, held for retirement or college? Federal judges don’t give a wink and a pass to ‘no big deal’ domain seizures as compared to ‘catastrophic’ domain seizures. The present ~100K awards the courts are handing down are badly needed as a deterrent to domain hijacking, cases in point, and hijacking victims should show up and collect.
The seizure of these assets is a violation of federal law, it’s not like the complainant failed to use a donut mitten. Who’s the cake-eating legal eagle at Google or WebMD making the decision to leave six figures on the table? I wonder if they know that the court award is triggered by the registrar hold, rather than a completed transfer.
Eric Lyon says
They didn’t need to reply because the complainant lied. They should have never claimed to have a federally filed trademark when they didn’t. Even if that wasn’t the case, they shot them self in the foot when they stated Google did not register the domain in bad faith. They’ll know better the next time they try to file on someone.
Dom says
UDRP CHAPTER 1.3
https://cyber.harvard.edu/udrp/opinion/procedures.html