Marchex & Berryhill Beat Back UDRP Challenge On WebAnywhere.com

by

Marchex Sales, LLC  (“Respondent”), represented by John Berryhill just beat back a UDRP on the domain name WebAnywhere.com that was brought by Webanywhere Ltd of the UK.

At the end of the day this was a slam dunk case decided by a three member panel with the only remaining question is why the panel didn’t find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.

WebAnywhere trademark in the UK was registered in September 2010.

Marchex has owned the domain name since 2004.

Case closed.

Marchex offered to sell the domain name for $30K which is a bargain in my opinion, but instead the Complainant rejected the opportunity to buy the domain and filed this ridiculous and groundless UDRP instead.

There wasn’t a mention of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking in the decision but I have no idea why.

 

 

 

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. BrianWick says

    Lets see – a broker (representing the complainant) will call them in 2 months with a $10K offer.
    What do you think the new counter offer will be = $150K ?
    And if they counter at $35K I would re-counter at $200K

  3. Jeff Schneider says

    R. E. = ” There wasn’t a mention of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking in the decision but I have no idea why. ”

    They probably approached the bench to have it struck, so as to escape RICKS WRATH

    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

  4. John Berryhill says

    “WebAnywhere trademark in the UK was registered in September 2010.

    Marchex has owned the domain name since 2004.

    Case closed.”

    That was pretty much the response. The Panel obviously didn’t feel like belaboring the point either. This is a nice decision to add to the “cite this” stack, since the legitimate interest criterion was cleanly decided on priority alone, and expressly states that priority is itself a legitimate right.

    Priority has been all over the map in UDRP decisions, there are some that say it is inherent in the “identical or similar to a trademark” criterion that the complainant’s rights are senior to the domain name, and there are some that address priority in connection with the “bad faith” criterion. This one pegs it under “legitimate rights or interests” which is often skipped over in these sorts of decisions.