Redactable.co owner wins dispute for Redactable.com.
A SaaS company that helps people redact documents won a UDRP that will allow it to upgrade its domain name from .co to .com.
Redactable Inc., which uses the domain name redactable.co, won the dispute against redactable.com.
James Robinson, president of document management company PaperFree Corporation, acquired the domain name last month and forwarded it to his company website. The domain was listed for sale on BrandBucket for $2,195.
Robinson argued that it was a generic term related to document redaction, so forwarding it to his company’s website made sense.
Redactable Inc. claimed in the UDRP that it didn’t buy the domain because of its “exorbitant” price during its startup phase as a company. (Note to startups: if you can acquire the .com of your desired domain for only $2,195, go for it. I would question a company’s longevity if it won’t pay this much for a domain name. Especially if I were a law firm looking to pay a subscription for a redaction tool. Note that the Respondent acquired the domain just last month, and now the Complainant had to pay much more than $2,195 to file the UDRP and hire lawyers.)
National Arbitration Forum Panelist Dennis Foster found in Redactable Inc’s favor and ordered the domain transferred.
There’s an interesting twist in this case. The Respondent said he “terminated his lease” of the domain in October and that “The Lessor claims that the disputed domain name will not be leased to any other entity, but will be offered for sale at the price of US$2,950.” The domain had a lease-to-own option at BrandBucket, but the domain was transferred to Robinson’s name upon acquisition. I’ve never seen a lease-to-own option in which the domain is transferred to the lessee’s name before making all payments, so I question the details in acquisition. But you should keep tabs on how people who buy your domains on payment plans are using them and if it could cause any problems.
Craig Beaker of Perkins Coie represented the Complainant. It appears the Respondent was self-represented.
David Michaels says
The domain name was created in 2016 at GoDaddy.
This udrp policy is being abusive applied to grant property rights to new trademark owners of merely descriptive, but registered, trademarks.
It’s unacceptable and must be stopped.
amplify says
Way off topic here: That’s a really clever idea for software. I remember when I was in the U.S. Marines. My service was at the tail end of a using Social Security Numbers, making way for DoD ID numbers as a replacement. We’d have to redact a lot of stuff for filing and it wasn’t even “top/secret” material, just PII. Of course, the majority of this stuff was still done on paper and not PDFs… But, jeez, to license this for military use has 8 figures written all over it with the time it could save redacting REAL secret documents! (I’m unsure how they do it now so it might be far less and they could probably already have a solution for it). Just a trip down memory lane…
David J Castello says
I read the decision and it appears that if the Respondent hadn’t forwarded the domain to his site the Complainant would’ve lost the case.