Set aside TRO in Calculator.com case — Judge won’t

Domain will continue to point to original owner’s website.

The judge overseeing a lawsuit for Calculator.com has ruled (pdf) that she won’t set aside a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that effectively transferred the domain back to the original owner.

Judge Beth Bloom denied Stands4’s request to set aside the TRO. She approved the TRO the prior week following the original owner of Calculator.com filed a lawsuit saying the domain was stolen.

Here’s the story:

Stands4 states it bought the Calculator.com domain name last month for $180,000 and then spent $50,000 launching a website on it. But the lawsuit alleges the domain name was stolen and that Stands4 might have bought a “hot” domain name.

A purported thief tried to sell the domain on Sedo in 2018, but the buyer canceled the sale following trying to verify ownership.

As stated by the lawsuit, the thief impersonated the domain owner in 2018 and used false documents to trick Network Solutions into transferring the domain name to him or her. Network Solutions apparently moved the domain back into the correct account but did not revert the contact information to the original owner, so the alleged thief was able to transfer the domain to GoDaddy this year.

The effect of the judge’s decision means that the domain name will point to the Plaintiff’s website not Stand4’s website, for now.