Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News & Website Stuff

Domain Name Industry News and Website Stuff

Featured Domains

Lawsuit filed to recover stolen three letter .com domain names

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Suit alleges domain names were stolen after AOL email account was compromised.

Daniel Kametani of California has filed a lawsuit (pdf) to recover six three letter .com domain names that he says were stolen after someone hijacked his AOL email account.

The in rem lawsuit against the six domain names was filed in federal district court in Virginia, the home of .com registry Verisign.

Kametani has been the registrant of jye.com, fsq.com, qgg.com, qju.com, vzv.com and qqp.com since 2000, according to the suit. He says that his @aol.com email address was compromised at the beginning of February and the thief then transferred the domain names.

All six domain names currently have Whois privacy.

The suit was filed under the Anticybersquating Consumer Protection Act, which is a common way to recover stolen domain names. This approach was recently used to return CostaRica.com to its rightful owner.

Stevan Lieberman of Greenberg & Lieberman, LLC is representing Kametani.

Lawsuit filed to recover stolen 4-number domain names

by — Policy & Law 4 Comments

Previous owner says two four-digit domain names were stolen.

Thomas Keefe, Jr. has filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) in U.S. federal district court to recover domain names he alleges were stolen from his eNom account.

Keefe alleges that the domain names 1414.com and 6144.com were stolen in December 2015, although he didn’t notice the theft until October 2016.

His lawsuit includes a number of claims, including violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. For this, he is claiming common law trademark protection in the domains due to his long use in connection with paid advertising services (i.e., domain parking).

According to the suit, Keefe used eNom’s two-factor authentication, so it’s not clear how the domains were stolen.

That said, the domain name 1414.com sure did get around after the apparent theft. I count nine different owners in whois since the alleged theft, according to DomainTools historical whois records.

Keefe is represented by Attison Barnes and David Weslow of Wiley Rein. Wiley Rein is also representing the plaintiff in a stolen domain case for GMF.com, which was filed just three days before the Keefe case.

Two stolen three-letter domains returned via UDRP

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Panels order EDP.com and LGI.com to be transferred back to their previous owners.

Two three-letter domain names that were allegedly stolen from their owners have been returned through cybersquatting claims under UDRP.

In separate decisions, a panel awarded the transfer of EDP.com to Energias de Portugal, S.A. and LGI.com to Liberty Global, Inc. Click here to continue reading…

Lawsuit filed to recover stolen domains: 5678.com, 26266.com and Manhua.com

by — Policy & Law 8 Comments

Suit by domain investor in China alleges domains stolen from her eNom account.

A Chinese domain name investor has filed a lawsuit (pdf) alleging that three of her domain names were stolen.

Qianqian Jin filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to recover Manhua.com, 5678.com and 26266.com. The suit was filed against the domain names themselves (in rem), as well as what is likely a fictitious name.

Manhua is a term for Chinese comics (similar to manja in Japan). The other domains are valuable because they are high-quality numeric domains.

The plaintiff estimates the value of the domain names is between $250,000 and $1 million.

The domain names are currently registered at Dynadot with private whois records.

Qianqian Jin is represented by Greenberg & Lieberman and ESQwire.com.

UDRP panel doesn’t give back OnlineMBA.com, stolen from Moniker

by — Policy & Law 1 Comment

Company says domain name was stolen from its Moniker account, but UDRP panel determines it didn’t prove trademark rights.

An Austin company that once owned OnlineMBA.com has failed to recover the allegedly stolen domain name through a UDRP.

Mascot Media Circle, LLC has owned the domain name since 2010. This summer it realized it was no longer in control of the domain name, and alleges that it was stolen from its Moniker account. This sounds plausible, given the number of security issues discussion of domains stolen from the registrar since it switched platforms last year.

DomainTools historical whois records show the domain name was in Mascot’s control at the end of 2014. A February 20, 2015 record shows the domain name was still at Moniker but in another person’s name and pending transfer. It was subsequently transferred to NameCheap.

The panel ruled that Mascot did not show it had trademark rights in the term “Online MBA”.

UDRP can be used to recover stolen domain names, but the complainant must prove all elements of the policy. In cases of theft, proving trademark rights is often the hardest part.

Earlier this year, domain name attorney John Berryhill successfully recovered the stolen domain name EHT.com through UDRP.

Since the complainant in this case chose a three person panel, I hope it tried to get at least one person on that panel that has dealt with a stolen domain UDRP in the past.

OnlineMBA.com is certainly a valuable domain name. Mascot will now need to turn to the courts to try to recover the domain.