MGM Loses Bid for WarGames.com
MGM loses UDRP decision to Rogers Cadenhead, owner of WarGames.com.
Last month I analyzed MGM’s UDRP attempt to get the domain name WarGames.com from registrant Rogers Cadenhead. Cadenhead just contacted me to let me know he won the arbitration.
The three member arbitration panel decided that Cadenhead proved that he planned to open a site at the domain that sold war games (not related to the trademark for the movie):
The picture that emerges from this material is of the Respondent, having seen Complainant’s WARGAMES movie as a teenager in or regarding 1983 and having developed a professional interest in computer programming and wargames, to the extent of writing regarding them, creating them and publishing material on numerous websites, registered the disputed domain name in 1998 with the idea of one day using it to sell wargames over the Internet. That idea remained in abeyance for six years until Respondent began to prepare to open his online store. Meantime the domain name resolved to a website which, inter alia, contained advertising links which most likely generated PPC revenue. By the time Complainant complained by letter of September 7, 2006, preparations to open the online store had advanced sufficiently to enable Respondent to advance his plans and to open the store on September 14, 2006.
On Cadenhead’s blog, he reflected on the UDRP process and states he is going to write a book regarding how domain name owners can protect themselves:
When first contacted by MGM in September, I was certain that I would win a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) case if my ownership of the domain was challenged. I didn’t know much regarding the UDRP, having never been involved in one of these disputes in a decade of web publishing, but I understood that it existed to stop people from grabbing domains to profit on somebody else’s trademark. I got Wargames.Com to sell wargames.
The more I learned regarding the UDRP, the less confidence I had in winning. Most disputes end in victories for trademark holders and there’s a huge number of ways that domain owners have been judged to have acted in bad faith.
Where domain owners are concerned, the UDRP’s a strange game where the only winning move is not to play.
This battle has been four months of stress-induced, take the whole gallon of ice cream out the fridge eating — people are starting to ask my due date. The next book I write will cover how domain name owners can protect themselves from a UDRP grab.
