Rising star or a falling star?
Here’s an interesting UDRP over a great generic domain name, RisingStar.com.
Investment company Rising Star AG, which owns RisingStar.ch, bought the domain name RisingStar.com for $5,000 in 2006. It forgot to renew the domain name in 2010 and it went to auction on SnapNames, where it sold for $3,300. (Rising Star claims it sold for $1,000, but it apparently doesn’t know how to search on Google.)
For some reason Rising Star AG waited two years to decide to do anything about this, which makes me wonder how big of a deal it really is to the company.
The person who bought the domain name on SnapNames obviously bought it for its generic value, despite Rising Star AG arguing “as the disputed domain name is now for sale, it seems obvious that its present owner, the Respondent, bought the disputed domain name for the purpose of selling the disputed domain name to the Complainant who had owned it years before”.
Frankly, I think $3,300 is a bargain for this domain name. $5,000 was a bargain, too.
And although the panel didn’t consider laches (because it already found against the complainant), this is a great example of where the doctrine of laches should apply. Although it’s only been two years since the current owner bought it, you’d think Rising Star AG would have noticed this immediately.
Another interesting part of this case is that the three person panel acknowledged that the purchase price of the domain name indicated that it was likely an investment. Here’s what the panel wrote:
…As opposed to that, the Respondent contends that it bought the disputed domain name at an auction for the price of USD 3,300, from which one can take the undisputed fact that the Respondent bought the disputed domain name at an auction for a price of at least USD 1,000, which is an amount considerably in excess of mere registration costs for a domain and can be considered an investment in a domain name.
The respondent was represented by ESQwire.
Acro says
Wow. “…an investment in a domain name”
Who is the panelist, he deserves his own plaque on the moon.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Acro – one of the panelists was The Hon Neil Brown Q.C.. He is one of the most levelheaded panelists out there, and he genuinely tries to understand both sides of the story.