Instrumentation Northwest ought to ask its lawyer for its money back

It just wasted money filing a frivolous complaint over INW.com.

The results are in on Instrumentation Northwest’s case against Nat Cohen’s Telepathy for the domain INW.com.

No surprise here. With the help of domain attorney Ari Goldberger, Telepathy won the case.

But the complainant ought to really ask its lawyer to give back whatever he or she charged to represent it. This case was dead from the beginning, and any good lawyer would have told their client this. (Perhaps their lawyer did and the firm didn’t listen.)

The panel declined to find reverse domain name hijacking, but concluded:

Finally, the Panel declines to find reverse domain name highjacking on this record, although a finding of RDNH could arguably be supported here. Be that as it may, following carefully weighing all of the circumstances of the case, the Panel chooses to interpret this Complaint as misguided inasmuch as it was doomed from the start and ought to not have been brought. There is no hard evidence, though, that Complainant was ill motivated in lodging the Complaint.

This is tough to swallow. If a case is doomed from the beginning, a sophisticated firm ought to have been able to determine that ahead of it forced an innocent party to pay a lawyer to defend itself.

We’re talking regarding a firm that offered $2,100 for a three letter .com domain name. When the owner responded back with a much higher price it filed a UDRP.

To me, this case is a good example of RDNH. Its certainly “ill motivated” in what it forced Telepathy to do.

But either way, I really hope the complainant’s lawyer cautioned against filing this case. Not only would it be impossible to win the case, but a quick web search regarding Telepathy would show that the respondent would fight the case and ultimately win.