Lawyer fell for DomainGang story regarding eNom Backpack Girl

More UDRP hilarity.

Yesterday, I wrote regarding how an Australian firm argued in a UDRP that the famous Backpack Girl was planted by the owner of Patricks.com since the complainant’s (a firm called Patricks) CEO looked like Backpack Girl.

It was hilarious.

It gets even funnier.

Once the respondent’s attorney John Berryhill explained in the response that this stock photo was the default on hundreds of thousands (millions?) of parked pages, the complainant’s lawyer Jason R. Buratti wouldn’t let it go.

Instead, he did some research and made a stunning find: that the blonde Backpack Girl that looks a lot like Patricks CEO had been retired on parked pages at the time in question. So the respondent must have been targeting Patricks’ CEO!

Why did Buratti think this? He came across a satirical article on DomainGang saying that the original Backpack Girl was being replaced with a Hispanic woman.

In a supplemental filing (that wasn’t considered by the panel), Buratti wrote:

For all its history, the Response failed to inform us that “backpack girl” was decommissioned in 2012, when the “typically Hispanic” look of Jaunita Rodriguez (depicted in the margin) replaced Ms. Stellar. ((reference to DomainGang joke article omitted)). Surely, “backpack girl” Ms. Rodriguez does not look like Aimee; “backpack girl” Ms. Stellar does. See Complaint at 7 (showing Aimee’s 2012 picture). The disputed domain continued to display “backpack girl” Ms. Stellar but not Ms. Rodriguez (see, e.g., Annex 22 from July 5, 2013) – a domain Respondent does not even argue (nevermind prove) was actually parked during this time and did not select this image of Ms. Stellar (though his lawyer argues it is parked today). Once again, only one inference is supported by the facts: Respondent controlled the domain in around and following 2012, published Aimee’s likeness there, and targeted Complainant.

Oh man, we’ve got ourselves a Domain Dunce award winner here for sure.

You can get more details in a comment from Berryhill here.