For Immediate Release: Case Update: Domainers Beware

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Los Angeles) recently entered an order concerning domain names that is very important for ALL domain name holders.

In short, where a domain name holder was sued for cybersquatting and failed to respond (some report because he could not afford counsel) the judge held the domain name holder in default. Here is where it gets interesting (scary). The plaintiff could locate no other property owned by the defendant domain holder but for roughly 800 domain names by looking it up through WHOIS.

In a case we believe to be the first of its kind the judge awarded all 800 domain names to the plaintiff as part of a damages award for the defaulting defendant. In short, the judge held that the domain names, without viewing their individual worth, if any, were personal property of the defendant and thus attachable with the ability to be taken by a plaintiff even if the defendant did not show up and have his day at trial.

There is no word as to whether ICANN will weigh in on this. We believe this to be the furthest we have ever seen a judge go to assess a remedy against a domain name holder. In the past judgments had been limited to the transfer of the actual domain name at issue. Now this sets an interesting and possibly dangerous precedent for domainers throughout the world – loose one – you could loose them all!

In the past we have helped domainers to structure ownership of their domains to avoid such a possible catastrophe. While we will be reviewing our strategies in doing this we will undoubtedly keep an eye on this case and have plans in place to make sure this cannot happen to anyone who uses one of our recommended plans.

As always, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us. But we just wanted to post this to let you all know to be aware!
To read more about the case see Christopher Bosh vs. Luis Zavala et al., Case 2:08-cv-04851-FMC-MAN.

The Trademark Company