Pablo Palatnik, ShadesDaddy founder.
Pablo Palatnik is ecstatic, he cannot hide his overflowing excitement over the news: ShadesDaddy.com, the domain stolen from his business almost 10 days ago, is back in his possession.
“I’m so relieved, but it still has to sink in,” says Palatnik on the phone.
“Frustration has turned into joy and I’m working on undoing the SEO damage the thieves did to my domain,” he adds.
After plenty of corporate lobbying and pushing in all directions, including talking to FBI agents and filing a federal lawsuit, ShadesDaddy.com was magically returned to eNom, the domain registrar it was stolen from.
No thanks to Ename, of course; the Chinese registrar flat out refused to return the domain, raising questions about how long they will retain ICANN accreditation at this rate.
Verisign, managers of the .com/.net TLDs, made an executive decision, removing the domain from the possession of Ename and sending it back to eNom; once there, the domain was returned to Pablo Palatnik’s account.
“I provided more information than they ever asked for, including business records of use, Twitter and Facebook accounts, the fact that we have a registered trademark,” says Pablo Palatnik.
“The support we received was overwhelming, I got more than 300 emails from people willing to help with their corporate connections,” adds Palatnik.
In the end, someone at Verisign had to yank the domain from the possession of the Chinese domain thieves, and Ename; this is a task that should not take almost 10 days to perform, given the overwhelming amount of evidence presented.
Palatnik plans to use the amount of knowledge he accumulated from this case, to lobby for changes at ICANN and Registrars; holding his domain hostage should not have happened in the first place. Palatnik’s lawyer, Rafael Recalde of the Recalde Law Firm, PA, handled the case.
We are extremely happy about the great news of ShadesDaddy.com being returned, and we’d like to thank everyone involved that positively affected the reversal of this brazen domain theft.
That news is fresh! I clicked the link, and got redirected to tradegogo.net, because the servers must not have updated in the zone, yet, though it shows updated on the whois.
Louise – Actually, that has to do with your ISP caching the IPs.
That explains it! Glad Mr. Palatnik got his business back! It is reassuring to know, Verisign will finally do something if:
trademark can be proved
use proved
facebook
twitter
lawyers hired
corporations lobbied
Federal lawsuit filed
FBI talked to
Louise – The current process is highly bureaucratic and this example clearly shows how helpless domain owners can feel when their domains get stolen.