After losing a UDRP, the cybersquatter managed to get the domain back when the complainant transferred the domain to another registrar.
The Internet Commerce Association’s weekly UDRP Digest featured an interesting case today.
Law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP previously won a UDRP for the domain GibsonDum.com. The domain was at Namecheap, and the registrar transferred the domain to the law firm.
When Namecheap transferred the domain, it included the instruction, “Please note that it is important not to initiate a transfer request until you have updated the privacy email or disabled the Domain Privacy service. Otherwise, the EPP code will also be sent to the previous domain owner.”
Guess what happened? Exactly that.
Five months later, the law firm decided to transfer the domain. But it didn’t change the Whois privacy, the EPP code went to the prior registrant, and that registrant decided to use it to transfer the domain back to themself.
The three-person World Intellectual Property Organization panel was sympathetic to how the law firm overlooked this, and ordered (pdf) the domain to be transferred back to it.
The panel also noted that it would be helpful if there were explicit rules for how registrars transfer domains to complainants post-decision. It cited a joint report spearheaded by Internet Commerce Association and WIPO that discussed the post-decision transfer process.
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