Another round against Chris Pearson — WordPress wins

Thesis creator loses cybersquatting case.

Automattic, the firm behind WordPress, has successfully defended a challenge by Thesis developer Chris Pearson over the domain name Thesis.com.

Pearson had a high profile spat with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg regarding five years ago. Pearson had released his Thesis software with a licensing fee; Mullenweg argued it ought to be released under GPL since it contained lots of code from WordPress. The issue was apparently settled in 2010.

Late last year, the owner of the Thesis.com domain approached multiple parties regarding buying the domain name. Automattic claims that Pearson was contacted regarding the domain name, but Automattic outbid him, paying $100,000 for the domain name.

Fast forward to 2015. Pearson filed a cybersquatting complaint with National Arbitration Forum to try to get the domain name.

The three person panel found that Pearson did not prove Automattic registered and used the domain name in bad faith.

Regardless of the decision, I think it’s fair to say that the only reason Automattic bought the domain name was since of Pearson’s popular product.