Much Ado regarding Ado.com: Carrillo sues bus firm following bad UDRP decision
Domaining.com owner sues to retain ownership of Ado.com and asks for a finding of reverse domain name hijacking.
Francois Carrillo, the owner of domain blog aggregator Domaining.com, has sued (pdf) Mexican bus firm Autobuses dr Oriente ADO, S.A. de C.V. following a UDRP panel ordered his domain Ado.com transferred. He is seeking the UDRP to be overturned and is asking for a penalty for reverse domain name hijacking.
The World Intellectual Property Organization UDRP decision came as a shock as the panelists handed over a valuable three-letter domain name to a Mexican firm that Carrillo, who lives in France, stated he hadn’t heard of when he bought the domain name. The decision also had misstatements regarding pricing of domain names.
The suit questions claims made by the bus firm in its UDRP complaint such as the existence of U.S. trademarks. It also points out that the bus firm’s lawyer in the UDRP was also an accredited UDRP panelist, suggesting potential bias by the three peer panelists. The ability for lawyers to serve as counsel in UDRP cases while also being accredited panelists is a big issue for UDRP fairness.
David Weslow of Wiley Rein LLP is representing Carrillo. Weslow has handled a number of similar cases that resulted in the original UDRP complainant paying to settle the case.
The case was filed in Denver since the bus firm agreed to submit itself to jurisdiction there when it filed the UDRP; it is the location of NameBright, which is the registrar of record for Ado.com.
