Following Losing UDRP, Complainant Sues to Get FirstQuote.com

Earlier this year a workers compensation insurance firm that has a trademark for 1stQuote lost a UDRP for the domain name FirstQuote.com. On the balance, the panel found that the domain name owner registered it due to the generic nature of the domain name.

Now the complainant is taking the matter to the courts, filing an in rem case (pdf) against the domain name FirstQuote.com.

Interestingly, the UDRP was filed by Aspen Holdings, Inc, while the lawsuit was filed by MARKEL ASPEN, INC. d/b/a FIRSTCOMP INSURANCE.

The plaintiff lays out a similar case to what was argued in the UDRP. Except that it omits the fact that it lost an arbitration matter for the domain name.

Clearly the registrant of the domain name FirstQuote.com is reachable given that he responded to the UDRP. It seems that filing this in rem action against the domain name could be a way to slip a lawsuit through and get control of the domain name. It also avoids jurisdiction issues with the registrant being in Hong Kong.

The whois record was in a whois privacy setting when the case was filed, which means the domain name owner might not receive notice of the dispute. (It had a public whois record for a while following the UDRP, and is public again.)

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.