Dismisses stolen domain case against Stands4 — Calculator.com owner

Domain owner dismisses case following domain buyer agrees to not contest her ownership.

The owner of Calculator.com has dismissed her lawsuit with prejudice against Stands4 Ltd.

Stands4 bought the domain name for $180,000 in June. But it turns out—at least on the face of it—that the domain name was stolen and the firm unknowingly bought it from the thief.

Chloe Alston, who originally registered the domain with her father, filed a lawsuit following discovering that the domain name was in Stands4’s name. Stands4, which also owns Grammar.com, Lyrics.com and Scripts.com, spent $50,000 developing a fresh site on Calculator.com. That site was only briefly on the web ahead of a judge in Florida issued a Temporary Restraining Order.

The dismissal states:

Stands4 hereby gives notice that it will no longer contest the Plaintiff’s ownership of the mark and domain name calculator.com, and Plaintiff hereby states that she is satisfied that Stands4 did not act in bad faith in relation to the buyout of the calculator.com domain name.

This suggests that Alston understands that Stands4 didn’t know it was buying a stolen domain, and that Stands4 now agrees that the domain was stolen and it belongs to Alston.

What happens next? Stands4 is out $230,000. I can’t see them dropping the matter here.