TRAFFIC founder, Rick Schwartz.
Rick Schwartz has lost the UDRP that he filed against the owner of the domain DomainKing.biz. The Respondent in this case was Hargurnaz Singh of India.
The shocking decision was delivered by a sole panelist, Matthew S. Harris, who as part of the decision made use of the Respondent’s assertions that they were not aware of the “Domain King” trademark.
Such a claim is most definitely ludicrous, as Rick Schwartz has made use of his registered trademark and moniker across the global domain community for more than a decade.
Typically, in cases such as this, Complainants often seek a three member panel, in order to select panelists that are statistically in favor of trademark holders.
Unfortunately for Mr. Schwartz, this was not the case, and despite the Respondent’s self-representation, very little weight was given to a solid, ten year old trademark.
In our opinion, the case was not presented aggressively enough, giving the opportunity to the Respondent to even claim a case of “reverse domain name hijacking.”
The panelist denied such a finding, while ordering the domain to remain with the Respondent.
Mr. Schwartz has the option to appeal the decision in a court in the United States, as dot .biz domains are managed within the US.
For the full text of the UDRP decision against the domain DomainKing.biz, click here.
Good thing the domain community is not a monarchy anyway. The monarchy in domaining is .com being TLDKING. No one gives a crap who is the self proclaimed ruler of the domain space, and if it were not for this article, no one would ever type in DomainKing.BIZ for chrissake. Otherwise it might have mattered.
yancy – It’s not about “monarchy” any more than “Burger King” or hundreds of other “King” trademarks, including many more in German.
It’s also about the visibility of the .biz domain (and the .ng by the same owner) in Google.
My butler has informed me that Castle.Domains is available to register
Seems to me that Rick wouldn’t necessarily care about a .biz domain. Since trademarks in general need to be actively protected to remain valid, maybe it was it filed as a measure towards that end? Would be interesting to hear from a pro like Mr. Berryhill as to whether this is correct or not.