Finds in Favor of eRestaurant.com Owner — Arbitration Panel

Domain theft and now a UDRP. Defending a good domain name isn’t easy.

A domain name owner who has by now gone through the hassle of having his domain name stolen has now succeeded in winning a UDRP to keep the domain name.

Altametrics, Inc filed the case against Ryan Sveinsvoll, who owns the eRestaurant.com domain name. The history of the domain name is interesting. Sveinsvoll appears to have purchased the domain name in 2003 and it was then hijacked in 2008. When the domain name was returned the whois was replaced with Sveinsvoll’s name rather than the firm name under which it was previously registered.

For that reason, the panel decided that the date he got the domain name back ought to be the registration date, not 2003. That seems like a questionable decision given the circumstances.

Still, it may have played a role in the back of the panelists’ minds when deciding the case against the complainant. The panel ruled that it wasn’t registered and used in bad faith for a number of reasons — counting the generic nature of the domain name.

It appears Sveinsvoll defended himself in the case.