UDRPSearch owner sues following UDRP filed against one of his domains
VirtualPoint claims reverse domain name hijacking and asks for at least $100,000.
VirtualPoint, Inc., the firm that runs the UDRP information site UDRPSearch.com, has filed a lawsuit following one of its own domain names was subject to a UDRP.
Florida firm FastTrak, which uses the domain name FastTrak.biz, filed a UDRP against VirtualPoint’s domain name FastTrak.com.
In its dispute, FastTrak stated “the internet is our store front, and we would like to improve our online presence with the most common domain extension .COM.”
VirtualPoint’s owner David Lahoti registered the FastTrak.com domain in 2004. As stated by the suit (pdf), in May 2016 the Florida firm inquired regarding buying the domain name. The next month it filed a design trademark in the U.S., which was granted in January 2017. Shortly thereafter it filed the UDRP.
The Florida firm registered the domain name FastTrak.biz in 2010.
VirtualPoint is asking the court to confirm that it is not cybersquatting on the domain and asks for a reverse domain name hijacking finding and at least $100,000.
If there’s any defense for the Florida firm’s actions, it’s that the Whois record has changed firm names a few times since Lahoti purchased it in 2014. In its UDRP the Florida firm states that VirtualPoint purchased the domain name in 2015, which is when the Whois record changed from one of Lahoti’s other firm names to VirtualPoint.
Still, if the complainant was sophisticated enough to look at historical Whois records, they surely would have noticed that the city name and phone number associated with the domain hasn’t changed even when the firm names have.
