Re: [ga-tm] Motion #6: UDRP review

["William S. Lovell" <wsl@cerebalaw.com>]

Without having read the case and thus taking its description
at face value, the legal conclusions expressed seem not to be
correct. There seems to have been a procedural error by
someone, rather than any new, precedent-making law --
see below:

List Admin wrote:

> From: Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>
> To: <ncdnhc-discuss@lyris.isoc.org>
> Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 23:33:36 -0400
> Subject: Motion #6: UDRP review
[snip]
>  
> 3. We note with great concern that one US court has
> decided that a respondent has no right to appeal a
> decision by a UDRP panel to transfer a name.* If this
> becomes a precedent, the procedural and substantive
> aspects of the UDRP need to be substantially revised.
[snip}
> * Judge Young (Mass District Court, USA) held that
> no
> declaratory judgment was available to
> the registrant of corinthians.com, including under the
> ACPA, if the victorious party in the UDRP (the
> trademark holder) disclaimed any intention to file a
> trademark lawsuit of his own. There being exactly that
> disclaimer, he then dismissed the case for failure to
> state a claim.
In short, the * part does not lead to 3. There is a constitutional
requirement that for a Federal Court to have jurisdiction, there must
be a "case or controversy."  If the trademark holder disclaimed
any
intention to file suit, then there is no trademark case or controversy,
and that kind of decision has been standard for decades.  But
that
does not mean there could not have been some "other" case or
controversy that would have supported a case.  The obvious one,
of course, would be that concerning the authority and jurisdiction
of the UDRP process in the first place.  Consequently, the broad
statement that "a respondent has no right to appeal a decision by a
UDRP panel to transfer a name" is simply not true.
--
         Bill Lovell

http://cerebalaw.com/biog.htm