Firm behind UDRPSearch.com sues following being hit with a UDRP

Virtual Point responds to StableTable.com UDRP with its own lawsuit.

Virtual Point, the firm that runs the UDRP search and aggregation site UDRPSearch.com, has filed a federal lawsuit following being hit with a UDRP.

Hedera AB, a Swedish firm, filed a UDRP (pdf) against the firm’s domain name StableTable.com on December 4. Rather than just wait for the World Intellectual Property Organization determination, Virtual Point filed a lawsuit (pdf) in federal court seeking declaratory judgment and damages.

Virtual Point registered the StableTable.com domain name in 2007. It alleges that the defendant contacted it the following year stating that it was starting a fresh business and wanted to buy the domain name.

The defendant obviously didn’t end up buying the domain name from Virtual Point. Instead, it registered the Swedish country code domain name StableTable.se in 2009 to market its self-stabilizing tables.

Correspondence from Hedera’s attorney, as well as the UDRP filing, claims that the trademark and business originates from the late 1990s in South Africa. Yet when Hedera tried to purchase the domain name (or see if the domain would be “let go”) it wrote:

Hi,
We are looking for a fresh domain name for a planned fresh business and one that came up as an idea was StableTable as you are the registrars of this name but it doesn’t seem to be in use, we wonder if you are interested in letting it go?

The message Hedera sent seems to conflict with the facts its attorneys, Advokatbyrån Gulliksson AB, are now representing. At a minimum, the note sent regarding the domain name does not suggest that the sender was claiming any trademark rights in it.

Virtual Point is represented by Rodenbaugh Law.