Web3 naming company dismisses its lawsuit, but the issue will still be litigated in the courts.
Blockchain naming company Unstoppable Domains has dismissed without prejudice a lawsuit it filed against Scott Florsck and Wallet Inc., which offered second level .wallet registrations in the Handshake system. But Florsck’s lawsuit against Unstoppable remains, meaning the saga isn’t over.
Unstoppable Domains originally sued Gateway Registry, the registry that managed Florsck’s .wallet domains, last year when the registry started offering second level registrations under .wallet on Handshake. Unstoppable offers a rival .wallet domain on a different blockchain and system.
Gateway quickly shut down shop instead of facing the lawsuit. Nevertheless, Unstoppable pushed the court to issue a judgment, even opposing Scott Florsck’s attempt to intervene in the case (the judge later allowed him to intervene).
Unstoppable and Florsck filed lawsuits against each other (within about an hour) on September 21, 2022.
The judge called for the cases to be consolidated, and Unstoppable and Florsck made their case for why their case should supersede the other.
But now Unstoppable has voluntarily dismissed its suit (pdf) against Florsck and Wallet Inc., stating the same reason as why it dropped the suit against Gateway in July this year: second level domains under Florsck’s .wallet are no longer offered:
Since this case was filed in September 2022, Defendants have not promoted or offered for sale domain names using Plaintiff’s WALLET marks. Therefore, the relief sought by Plaintiff now seems more of an academic exercise rather than an actual dispute sufficient to warrant the expense of litigation and use of the Court’s limited resources.
Yet Florsck hasn’t dropped his lawsuit, so the matter will still be litigated.
I’m not a lawyer, but I wonder if Unstoppable determined it would be in a better position to defend the lawsuit Florsck filed than to prosecute the lawsuit it filed. (Unstoppable declined to comment for this story.)
Unstoppable recently also bought the .sats TLD from the Handshake owner. The name was staked at Namecheap by the previous owner with hundreds of registrations. No official word from UNS, but the assumption would be that they are planning to launch the .sats TLD and trying to avoid conflict from the getgo.
Adds some credibility to the Handshake ecosystem – If you can’t beat em… buy em!
In regards to this countersuit, what about all the other TLDs that were staked at Gateway…class action?
> I wonder if Unstoppable determined it would be in a better position to defend the lawsuit Florsck filed than to prosecute the lawsuit it filed.
That’s a possibility that hasn’t occurred to me. However, I believe their investors are tired of and embarrassed by the lawsuit; especially because it wasn’t the slam dunk UD thought it was. Since the announcement of the lawsuit dismissal, UD has attempted to paint themselves as good actors but quickly turned heel once crypto enthusiasts started asking questions.
The co-founder even went so far as to “expose” Namecheap for funding Florsck’s defense team (as if that wasn’t public information). http://web.archive.org/web/20230915202053/https://twitter.com/matthewegould/status/1701743777394635072 (Wayback Machine link because UD team likes to delete tweets…oh, and be sure to check the hidden replies to said tweet)
The public embarrassment from the trial is so great that several UD employees have switched to using newer Twitter accounts.