Supreme Court declines to hear cybersquatting appeal

Trademark group had asked court to settle circuit split on domain registration dates.

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an appeal in a cybersquatting dispute over trx.com. Had the court heard the case, it could have had significant ramifications for how the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) is applied.

Loo Tze Ming bought the domain name trx.com for $138,000 in April 2022.

In October 2022, Fitness Anywhere LLC*, a company going through bankruptcy that claimed rights in TRX, filed a cybersquatting claim under UDRP. The following month, the panelist awarded the Complainant the domain name in a controversial decision.

Ming had overlooked the dispute notice and didn’t respond, so he sued Fitness Anywhere in Arizona to stay the transfer. That case was stayed because Fitness Anywhere was in bankruptcy.

Then, JFXD TRX ACQ LLC, which described Fitness Anywhere as its predecessor in interest, filed an in rem lawsuit against trx.com in Virginia, where the .com registry is based.

Given the ongoing lawsuit in Arizona, it was odd that JFXD TRX filed an in rem suit against the domain name, as it knew who the domain owner was and how to contact him. It could have been forum shopping to get the case out of Arizona, which is in the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit considers the original date a domain was registered, not when the current owner acquired it, when considering whether a domain was registered to target a party.

Ming successfully petitioned the court to transfer the in rem case to Arizona, where he had filed his lawsuit.

That killed the case because the court looked to the original 1999 registration date, which was before JFXD TRX was founded.

The district judge found many discrepancies in JFXD TRX’s arguments and found many of the filings unintelligible. (More details about those arguments and filings are here.) She not only ruled in favor of Ming, but also ruled that JFXD TRX should pay about $40,000 in attorney’s fees.

JFXD TRX filed an appeal that was denied. It then appealed to the Supreme Court, which decided this week not to hear the case.

While the case itself was a bit of a stinker, the International Trademark Association (INTA) had asked the court to hear the dispute to settle the conflicting precedent about when a domain is considered “registered”.

While the Ninth Circuit considers the original date a domain was registered, regardless of when the current registrant obtained the domain name, other circuits consider a change of registrant as a new registration.

*In a further twist, it appears that the original UDRP was likely filed under false pretenses. The UDRP was filed under the name Fitness Anywhere, but that company had already sold its trademarks before the UDRP was filed.