Lot of B.S. Around BS.com — There’s a

Domain name at center of lawsuit and WIPO action.

The previous owner of BS.com failed to recover the domain in a WIPO arbitration. In a decision dated September 1, the three person panel found that the complainant failed to prove it had a trademark for the term “BS”.

But there’s more to the story. The complainant once owned the domain name from 1997 until 2003. In 2003 the domain name was purchased by Hazan Ozdemir. In 2005 the complainant filed a lawsuit claiming Ozdemir stole the domain name. The lawsuit was struck out for want of prosecution in June 2007. (That means basically the judge felt the prosecution wasn’t moving forward adequately with the case.)

The respondent in this case, EUROPREMIUM LTD, claims it purchased the domain name in September 2007. The complainant alleges that EUROPREMIUM may actually be Ozdemir.

In November of last year EUROPREMIUM emailed the complainant regarding acquiring the domain name and stated it would sell the domain for $290,000, which it stated was the price it paid to acquire the domain name. EUROPREMIUM also stated that it was aware of the legal proceedings and that they had been struck out.

Then in June of 2008 the respondent stated it would sell the domain for $175,000, now claiming that this was the price it paid for the domain name.

It’s hard to tell if EUROPREMIUM is telling the truth, but there’s certainly a lot of B.S. going on here.