A UDRP should be responded to, or you might risk losing the domain.
A very peculiar and rather crafty UDRP at the National Arbitration Forum has resulted in the loss of the generic and aged domain name, BrandEnhancement.com.
The domain was registered in 1999, and it has been renewed every year since.
The Complainant, Leonhard Kurz Stiftung & Co. KG, is a large international company and a supplier of hot stamping and branding technology, based in Germany and online at Kurz.de.
In their filing, the Complainant stated that they have spent $125,000 dollars marketing the “brand enhancement” mark; they also have registered “Brand Enhancement by Kurz” in Germany.
The trademark application was filed in 2013 and was granted in April of 2014, a whole 15 years after the domain name, BrandEnhancement.com was registered!
Here’s where things get interesting.
Apparently, the Respondent’s contact information is outdated, and they did not respond to any email inquiries either. Their formed company was dissolved in 2000, and yet, somehow, the domain name gets renewed every year.
The managing email for the domain belongs to a domain name, nlightcom.com, that dropped as many as 8 years ago.
As expected, the Respondent did not file a response to this UDRP, and the sole panelist, Neil Anthony Brown, found all three necessary clauses under the UDRP satisfied.
The domain name, BrandEnhancement.com was thus ordered to be transferred to the Complainant.
Moral of the story: ensure your WHOIS info is accurate and up to date. You can read the full case here.
This is 2nd generic domain lost in UDRP with NAF this week. Looks like NAF is getting worse than WIPO.
It is shame that ICANN allows such abuse of UDRP. They just don’t care. Jerks!
Mark – When the Respondent does not respond, the equilibrium between the Complainant and the Respondent is lost.
this is the kind of thing that makes the commerce department ceding complete control of the internet to icann akin to treason.
Anyone here could have taken the name by re-registering the admin contact email domain and working up from there.
This was not a “failure to update contact information”. The registrant organization no longer existed.
Looking at the WHOIS history, there is something odd about this name. There are a lot of things odd about this name. It is a zombie.
To begin with, anyone could have taken the name, since the admin contact email address uses an unregistered domain name. Had the Complainant contacted me, I would have advised registering the admin contact domain and simply taking it.
Taking the “auto renewal” thing in the decision – it wasn’t being auto-renewed. If you look back at the WHOIS history, the registrar expiration date on this name was 15-Dec-2001, well into 2013 and was set to NSI’s LAMEDELEGATION.NET nameservers.
There are a couple of reasons why that used to happen (e.g. company involved in bankruptcy proceedings), but there is a good chunk of names which NSI wasn’t letting drop from around 2004 onwards for reasons that have never been clear. Amigo.com sat at NSI expired but not dropping for a good ten years or so.
I don’t think there was an actual registrant being charged for renewals at the other end of this thing, since it looks like the only renewals being paid were the registry renewals instead of the registrar renewals.
Google streetview of the whois address shows a fairly non-descript office building on Route 1 in Laurel, and Google results on the address turn up former occupants and current neighbors of the suite 300 in question.
Interestingly, suite 300 itself was, at least in 2002 occupied by a DoD foreign language intelligence office of some kind:
http://www.federalregister.com/Browse/Document/usa/na/fr/2002/4/1/02-7732
Dr. Thomas W. Gething, Deputy Director, National Foreign Language Centers, 7100 Baltimore Avenue, #300, College Park, Maryland 20742; Electronic mail address: tgething @nflc. orgmailto: tgething@nflc.org
There are all sorts of interesting things tucked away in business parks in that area, but the occupation of that office by a DoD funded language intelligence operation is concurrent with registration of the domain name at that address.
The only identifiable person I can find in the WHOIS history is:
LARKIN, PHILIP BRANDS@NLIGHTCOM.COM
NORTH LIGHT
7100 BALTIMORE AVENUE, #300
COLLEGE PARK , MD 20740
301 8642626 (FAX) 301 8642629
The nlightcom.com domain is available again. Re-registration and email catch-all might pick up remnants of whatever he was into and what mailing lists he was on.
Larkin is a real person:
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/philip-larkin/25/844/469
Philip Larkin
Technology Development Manager, External Programs at NASA
…and involvement with various military contractors. His listed engagement with “North Light Communications” is said to have terminated in 2000.
“this is the kind of thing that makes the commerce department ceding complete control of the internet to icann akin to treason.”
Why? This happened under the current arrangement.
John – Thanks for all the extra info. Apparently, the previous owner works for Area 51 on the new NASA “flying saucer”.
John Berryhill as always on top of his and this game. But even though it looks allowable based on the details. It’s just another precedent set that other idiots with no real chance as a complainants to use. The more of these that take place will just weaken the policy and side with complainants in the future. Think about it. You want a great domain name. Hunt for one with flaws. File a UDRP and pay $1,500. You got a 50/50 shot. Unfortunately, the writing is on the wall. As it is becoming more difficult to find decent .com’s, more and more of this will be happening. Will it come in drips or will the flood gates open? Time will tell.