Cruises loses UDRP against James Booth for RCC.com — Royal Caribbean

Firm uses RCCL.com for corporate email and some email was misdirected.

Picture of three Royal Caribbean cruise ships on the ocean with a cityscape in the back

Royal Caribbean Cruises has lost a cybersquatting claim it filed against domain broker James Booth of BQDN.com over the domain name RCC.com.

Booth has bought/sold regarding 250 three-letter domain names and purchased this domain with similar plans. A couple of years following acquiring the domain, he turned on an email catchall and found that people were emailing sensitive information intended for the cruise line to RCC.com. Royal Caribbean uses RCCL.com for its email addresses.

It was at this point that things get a bit confusing. Even though Booth is a broker himself, the case states that Booth hired a broker to contact Royal Caribbean regarding the misdirected email and inviting them to buy it. That overture stated:

“Do you want me to continue to forward these emails? / I think you have a major problem here, not just since of the confusion from your clients not getting their emails answered but also email security. At some point RCC.com is going to sell and the fresh owners may not be as nice to forward your info. / Let me know if you have time to talk this stretch.”

Booth admitted that it was “an arguably ill-considered solicitation.”

Of particular concern to Royal Caribbean is that Booth shared the emails with an apparent outside party (the domain broker). That’s a bad idea.

Still, the panel found that the domain was likely not registered to target Royal Caribbean, and instead since of the acronym value of RCC.com.

Zak Muscovitch represented Booth in the UDRP.