Anteaters Fail to Eat Ant.com

Attorney John Berryhill successfully defends Ant.com in UDRP case.

Attorney John Berryhill has defended big animals such as Elephant.com. He’s even defended swine flu-carrying animals such as Pig.com. But he must have really set aside his ego to defend a tiny little pest in Ant.com. Nonetheless, he won.

The complainant was Atlanta Network Technologies, Inc., which operates ANTonline.com. The respondent was ANT.COM Limited, which offers search functionality and an internet browser toolbar that has been downloaded over a million times.

It’s surprising that ANT Online went following a domain owner who was clearly using the domain for a bona fide service. In fact, ANT.com is ranked in the top 20,000 web sites on Compete.com.

To try to make its case, ANT Online pointed out a long history of uses (counting a parked page) of the domain name prior to its current use. But apparently the complainant didn’t do much research into the ownership of the domain name, as the current registrant purchased the domain name well following all of the previous uses.

It wouldn’t take much effort to find out that the domain name was sold in 2006. Just searching Google for “Ant.com domain name” brings up this result at #9:

Ant.com Limited purchased the domain name following the 2006 sale, in 2008.

ANT Online’s dates didn’t make sense, either. It claimed to have been formed in 1996, but Berryhill proved that it didn’t exist until 1997. Berryhill also ripped through the complainant’s assertions that it had talked to the owner of the domain who stated he was holding out for millions of dollars:

Referring to Complainant’s allegations that there was an offer to sell the disputed domain name, during a conversation which Mr. Choplin [employee of complainant] claims to have had on March 20, 2007 with Mr. Pecaud [previous owner], Respondent points out that the Respondent in this Proceeding is Ant.com Ltd., a Hong Kong corporation that was formed in 2008, and to which Mr. Pacaud transferred the domain name in 2008. Thus, Mr. Choplin’s statement that “Respondent was holding the domain name out for sale” must be wrong as Respondent did not exist when Mr. Choplin claims he made his telephone call in 2007. Furthermore, Respondent contends that it could not have been possible for Mr. Choplin to have spoken to Mr. Pecaud in France on March 20, 2007 since Mr. Pecaud was travelling at that time and had arrived in JFK airport in Fresh York on March 19, 2007 as was demonstrated by copies of extracts from Mr. Pecaud’s passport which were annexed to the Response…

The panel found that ANTOnline failed to make a prima facie case that the respondent lacked rights or legitimate interests in the domain.

Here’s what bothers me most regarding this case. The lawyer for ANT Online was William Schultz of Merchant & Gould P.C. Schultz has handled regarding 20 UDRP cases. He also engaged in an auction on Pool.com for Shoppers.com ahead of going following (and losing) that domain in UDRP. So he must know how to perform basic domain name research. Certainly he could have pieced together the ownership history of the domain. Surely he knew what was really going on here.

(You can read the decision here. There are some other fun tidbits in the case that you’ll get a kick out of.)