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Man who paid $360k for 81.com says it’s stolen

by — Policy & Law 0 Comments

Dubai man files lawsuit to recover domain.

Picture of robber in black clothing, black at, black gloves and eye mask

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 brif 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.

 

HugeDomains gets reverse domain name hijacking win

by — Policy & Law 5 Comments

Company opted to file a UDRP instead of paying just $2,695 to buy the domain.

Picture of hundred dollar bills being flushed down the toilet

An online crystals seller could have bought a domain for $2,695. Instead, it spent nearly that much to lose a UDRP against the domain.

Domain investment company HugeDomains.com has successfully defended one of its domain names in a cybersquatting dispute, and the company that brought it has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

A company that sells rocks and crystals at rockncrystals.com.au filed the dispute.

The company wanted to get RockNCrystals.com when it expired but HugeDomains beat it on the drop. It then tried to buy the domain from HugeDomains for $1,000. The list price was apparently $2,695.

At this point, the Complainant filed a trademark application in the United States and filed the UDRP.

It told the World Intellectual Property Organization that not getting the domain would force it “to effectively kill our company and start a new one.”

The panel was not amused by this silly claim. It pointed out that the Complainant already has a domain it has been using for its site.

I also wonder why the company chose to file a poorly-argued UDRP for $1,500 (it actually paid more because HugeDomains chose a three-personal panel) when it could have bought the domain for only a bit more.

The panel found that the filing was insufficient on all three elements of UDRP and that it filed the case in abuse of the policy.

This WIPO panelist forgot something

by — Policy & Law 5 Comments

Vodacom filed dead-on-arrival case and domain owner said it was an abuse of the policy, but…

A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panelist has correctly found in favor of the registrant of VideoPlay.com, but he forgot something: to find the Complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking.

Vodacom (Pty) Ltd and Vodafone Group PLC filed the dispute against the owner of the domain who registered it in 2001. The earliest Vodafone can show any use of the term Video Play is 2014, according to the decision.

The Complainants tried to make a bad faith argument based on a single link on the site in 2003 pointing to what it says was an illegal download site. That’s a stretch…especially since the Complainant’s Video Play service didn’t exist until a decade later!

The domain registrant alleged that the Complainant “is misusing the UDRP system in an attempt to misappropriate the disputed domain name.”

For some reason, panelist Frederick Abbott did not formally decide on the issue of reverse domain name hijacking despite finding that the case was a bad one:

The Panel understands that Complainant thinks it would be a good idea to own the disputed domain name since it presumably has a commercial value to Complainant. But the Policy is not designed to accord rights to parties that think they have better uses for domain names than existing domain name registrants. Before an enterprise launches a commercial venture, it would be wise to investigate whether a domain name is available, or how much it might cost to purchase from a prior registrant.

 

Tina Dam sues over .Music, reveals investment

by — Policy & Law 2 Comments

Dam, who worked on new TLD applications, claims she has been cut out of equity ownership of .Music top level domain.

.Music top level domain logo

Former ICANN staffer Tina Dam, who left the non-profit to work with Constantine Roussos on new top level domains, is now suing Roussos and related companies.

Dam claims that she owned half the shares of MYTLD, a company formed with Roussos, which in turn was due to own a portion of DotMusic Ltd through an agreement between the companies.

The lawsuit alleges that Roussos later tried to renegotiate the deal but Dam didn’t sign the updated agreement.

Roussos later claimed that he considered MYTLD inactive and dissolved.

DotMusic ultimately prevailed in the heavyweight battle to get .Music, defeating companies including Amazon and Google.

Dam believes she has been cut out of ownership of some of the DotMusic equity. Her lawsuit (pdf), filed in Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles in July, states 15 causes of action.

The lawsuit also discloses how DotMusic might have managed to stay in the hunt against big companies for so long and ultimately prevail. It includes a signed investment agreement between one of Roussos’ companies and Tudor T & Credit Union Societe. Under the terms of the agreement, Tudor T would invest $5 million in DotMusic for a 10% share in the company, valuing it at $50 million. [Update: Lawyers representing Roussos and the related companies told Domain Name Wire that no investmetns were ever made and the agreement was not fully executed.]

Tudor T also bought a majority interest in DotSong and DotOnline for a combined $5 million, according to the agreement. Other companies won those contention sets.

The DotMusic valuation was based on lofty expectations that many new top level domain applicants had at the time. Roussos forecasted $62 million in revenue from the first year of .Music including over $35 million of sunrise revenue.

Lawyers for Roussons and related entities released the following statement to Domain Name Wire:

Mr. Roussos intends to vigorously defend against the allegations set forth in the complaint.  These claims have no merit and we are confident the case will be resolved in our favor.

Scratch.org settlement breaks down

by — Policy & Law 10 Comments

$20,000 agreement falls through.

Picture of a judge's gavel with the word "settlement" below it, with two red lines crossing out the word "settlement"

A settlement to resolve a dispute over the domain name Scratch.org has fallen apart.

Scratch Foundation, a non-profit created at MIT, filed a cybersquatting lawsuit against the domain name Scratch.org in January.

It was an in rem case against the domain, but Ravi Lahoti responded to the dispute saying that he was the owner of the domain. He also said that he was the original registrant of the domain dating to 1998. (Historical Whois records seem to bear out.)

This was before Scratch Foundation existed, but the group continued with its case. It even issued a subpoena to a domain registrar asking for information on more of Lahoti’s domains. Scratch Foundation is trying to paint a picture of Lahoti as a serial cybersquatter and wants information about his other domains and revenue generated from them.

The catch, as I see it, is that it would be impossible for Scratch Foundation to show that Scratch.org was registered in bad faith since Lahoti registered it well before the non-profit existed. Even if Lahoti has registered other domains in bad faith, it seems a stretch to say that about Scratch.org.

The two parties entered into settlement negotiations in which Lahoti would transfer the domain to Scratch Foundation for $20,000. As part of this, Scratch Foundation dropped discovery related to Lahoti’s other domains.

Now it gets to a he said, she said after the settlement apparently broke down.

Scratch Foundation says the settlement was agreed to and Lahoti broke it. Lahoti says that it was agreed to in principle, but he wasn’t happy with some of the final language and provisions in the agreement.

Following the breakdown, Scratch Foundation is moving forward with its demand for the data about Lahoti’s other domains.