Dubai man files lawsuit to recover domain.
A man who says he paid $360,000 to buy the domain 81.com alleges it has been stolen.
Sami Debizet filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against the domain in U.S. District Court in Virginia in an effort to recover the domain.
According to Debizet, he paid $360,000 to acquire the domain on May 7, 2013.
Two number .com domains are extremely rare and sales are infrequent, but this domain is probably worth a lot more than $360,000 today. NameBio shows just three two-number sales since 2014 and they are all for over $1.7 million. 2013 was before the big Chinese surge in short-domain investing.
One thing that’s troubling about the case is that it appears this domain has been out of the Plaintiff’s control for many years, and perhaps only in his control for a very brief period. Historical Whois records at DomainTools show the following timeline:
May 9, 2013: Japanese owner, domain at Melbourne IT
July 11, 2013: Domains By Proxy, domain at GoDaddy
September 13, 2013: Chinese owner, domain at eName
The Whois records show various Chinese owners since 2013.
Debizet’s declaration might shed more light on this, but it has not been add to the court system yet.
If anything, it seems like it will be difficult to argue common law trademark rights in a domain that was only in the owner’s control for a brief period of time six years ago.
Greenberg & Lieberman is representing the Plaintiff.
Alex says
Don’t buy domain if it’s on Chinese registrar. You can’t do anything if you are foreigner.
Joe says
Actually, it’s a .com, so unless it’s a .com.cn, it will be registered with a US registrar.
wanker says
The registry is verisign in the US but the registrar may be chinese. Of course the registry has a greater say in the matter.
Andrew Allemann says
It’s registered with a Chinese registrar. The registry is in the US.
Julia says
how many 2 letter dot coms are there anyway?
Tom Gibbs says
Assuming only English letters and numbers, there’s 1296 possible 2 digit domains for each tld
Andrew Allemann says
Yes but it’s NN and LL that are best.
Kingsley says
Such amount will propel my digital business to a new height… New theme, new staffs and a well furnished office and it was wasted on a domain that would be used for what again??
Darren Falconer says
Spell checker is your friend.