In response to a WIPO ruling

Garrow · Oct 28, 2016

Recently I received a complaint regarding a doman name which I defended and subsequently lost. But I have a few questions that someone might be able to answer and pacify my curiousity.

1. Before I was officially notified of the dispute I received two spam emails from US legal companies offering to defend my case - which at that time I was not aware of, so somewhat puzzled. How might these companies have found out about the case before me - does that affect my rights? (I have asked WIPO but they failed to reply)

2. The Complainant 's lawyer presented a supplementary file on the grounds that information had come to light that he was not aware of. In fact, all the information was available - if the lawyer had done his research properly eg: that I not only owned the disputed .com name but also own the same name but with .co.uk. The WIPO panellist ignored the lawyer's poor preparation.

3.The lawyer made some additional careless mistakes in his supplemental file which I highlighted and corrected. The WIPO panellist ignored these errors.

4. The lawyer defended his client's unwillingness to complain about all the domain names/websites that might be similar to the client's, on the grounds of financial cost. The WIPO panellist defended this lack of action arguing that the websites might have an agreement with the client or were supporting the client (which was not the lawyer's argument). Are panellist's allowed to defend complainant's in this way?

I would be grateful if you can answer any of these questions. I have 10 days to consider what to do, my guess is that the next step would be very costly. Many thanks.

Edwin · Oct 28, 2016

You'd be much better asking the question in a .com-centric forum. The WIPO process is very different to Nominet's DRS, so the expertise acquired from the latter process won't help you with the former, and could very well confuse you further since things that apply to DRS don't apply to WIPO, and vice-versa.

As to how the lawyers heard about it, there's probably something about the e-filing system whereby it goes on the WIPO database a bit earlier than the notification gets sent out, and the domain industry equivalent of ambulance chasers exploit that timing disparity. For instance, perhaps they can get the info from the search tool by playing with the parameters (that's just a guess - I don't KNOW how they do it): http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/

Edwin · Oct 28, 2016

Just to add to the above...

They're probably looking at the list of recent WIPO filings, for example:
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/casesx/list.jsp?prefix=D&year=2016&seq_min=2000&seq_max=2199

And then proactively digging out contact details for the cases that are listed with status "Compliance review pending" because that suggests there's a manual process going on. I would guess the official notification will only go out once that manual process is complete and the case becomes "live" with a date next to it.

Garrow · Oct 28, 2016

Hi, thank you for your helpful answer.... I will certainly look for a .com-centric forum. I'm new to this (as you can tell!) so all help appreciated.

Edwin · Oct 28, 2016

If you need professional representation, you'll want to get in touch with a specialist domain lawyer such as John Berryhill, Ari Goldberger etc. i.e. somebody with enough expertise that you're only paying for the benefit of their expertise, not for a learning curve while they educate themselves first. It won't be cheap, so you need to decide whether the domain's worth defending.

keys · Oct 28, 2016

You need to be aware that a domain dispute subject to WIPO policy or Nominet policy, is decided by the experts' interpretation of current guidelines. A judicial action may be dismissed for failure to comply with set procedure, this is unlikely to happen with arbritration unless the error is clear and significant.