The owner of Graceland.com shared his frustration with the world, as soon as the UDRP was filed for the domain, by the estate of the late Elvis Presley.
Titled “Graceland.com Is Under Siege“, the page describes in vivid detail the 19 year old history of Graceland.com, a domain that contains Biblical quotes:
“Graceland.com has operated for nearly 20 years with the same simple theme – the act of grace on the cross extended to mankind. It provides complete texts of the bible in English (protestant and catholic), Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Romanian, Hungarian, Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, and Afrikaans. The site does not glorify any individual, other than Jesus Christ. It does not sell to, profit from, or make money from web site visitors. There is only advertising on the home page to cover hosting and domain name registration costs (we don’t keep records of who read which passages like some people ). Now a UDRP dispute has been filed to take the domain name away . We believe this is an attempt at reverse domain name hi-jacking.”
In November 2013, the Authentic Brands Group (ABG) bought Elvis Presley’s intellectual property and the right to operate the Graceland tourist attraction; the company secured the rights to Elvis Presley’s image, name and likeness, in addition to the massive collection of photos, movies, television appearances and music specials featuring the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
More information regarding the escalation of the siege is presented in the following segment about Graceland.com, by its current owner:
“In over 19 years, there has never been any correspondence with the Elvis Presley estate. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Every effort has been made to ensure there was absolutely no confusion over the contents of this web site with that of Elvis’ estate. You would think that if there really was a problem, there would be a cease and desist or other correspondence long, long ago. So what changed? In November 2013, Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), which is the holding company for Elvis’ estate, was sold to Authentic Brands Group, who have made a billion dollar business out of dead celebrity merchandising. As part of this deal, Authentic Brands will operate Elvis’ Graceland property in partnership with Joel Weinshanker, the Chairman of the National Entertainment Collectibles Association (NECA). In December 2013, a representative of NECA approached us and made an unsolicited offer for the domain name. We politely refused the offer, and clearly stated that we had never considered selling the domain name. As a result, in January 2014, Elvis Presley Enterprises, now a division of Authentic Brands, filed a baseless UDRP dispute in an effort to simply take the domain name away from us.
You might be thinking “well it serves you right for registering the domain name in the first place”. That’s not the point. The name “Graceland” is not the exclusive worldwide property of the Elvis Presley estate. It’s not even the exclusive property of the Elvis Presley estate within the United States. The name is interchangeable with “Land of Grace” and both terms have been used by missions and organizations for hundreds of years, long before the Graceland property was built, let alone bought and made famous by Elvis. Christopher Columbus nicknamed Venezuela the Land of Grace. In fact, this is exactly what you’ll find at THELANDOFGRACE.COM – missionaries to Venezuela. However, you won’t find anything of value at LANDOFGRACE.COM because EPE has it “parked” (this is the registration of an internet domain name without that domain being associated with any services such as e-mail or a website – exactly the claim they’ve made against us). Also, and here’s a real kicker, EPE already owns GRACELAND.ORG , but they aren’t using it. They currently have it “parked” to generate advertising revenue, and are not using it for the Elvis’ Graceland property.”
The owner of Graceland.com then asks for visitors to pray, seeking donations from those willing to contribute to the legal defense fund:
“Your prayers are massively appreciated. That should be enough. If you’d like to help further… We have to respond to the UDRP complaint fairly soon, which involves a complicated legal process. If you would like to help by contributing to the legal defense fund, just click on the donate button below.”
It is unfortunate that the decision of a three member panel at the National Arbitration Forum was to give Graceland.com to the Complainant in the UDRP case.
This post is 100% true!
I dont understand why the domaining community isnt more upset by this decision.
Its descriptive, not generic but damn…..
its such a weak ‘mark’ that I cannot believe the UDRP process was used to steal this.
Hope the owner brings this to the Federal Level.
Maybe he can file something and negotiate with the now current owners [boo-hoo].
Betcha he would take 200k now?…No?
Sad story.
There is no justice anymore.
It is DEAD.
Kyle – The defense might have been weak, but the mark isn’t.
In fact, there are more than 15 classes that the trademark is live in; they even registered it for candy and dried fruit after a “Graceland Fruit” mark was granted to another company. That means, they are very aggressive.
Unfortunately the banner ads placed on Graceland.com also displayed links to Elvis related destinations and that might have contributed gravely against the Respondent’s loss of this UDRP.
Strong marks have protection.
Weak marks do not.
So….graceland is weak was my point. We basically are in agreement.