Re: [nc-udrp] Fw: <bloombert.com> Domain Name Dispute]

["John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D." <john@johnberryhill.com>]

Can you imagine filing a cancellation petition against a trademark
registration that is up for renewal in a couple of weeks, and you don't know
whether the registrant would renew?  That would be pretty stupid, now
wouldn't it?

It's funny how people's common sense flies right out the window when the
subject is domain names.

Yes, this issue has been addressed by the deletes task force, and my comments
there are identical to my comments here - a domain name registration is a
contract which is entered into for a fixed period of time.  Just because you,
a third party, have an objection to that contract, you do not have a right to
extend the term of that contract against the will of the two parties to the
contract.

There are people who do not respond to cease and desist letters because it is
often the case that it is easier to simply let a domain name expire and be
done with it, than to educate an attorney who sends you, for example, a
Verisign RNCA when the domain name is not even registered through Verisign.
There are also attorneys who have no idea what it costs to pay for
notarization of a document in some countries other than the USA (it can be
substantial in some countries).   Those registrants who are relying on the
expiration date for which they contracted are ENTITLED to rely on the fact
that the contract will indeed expire on the date they agreed it will expire.

A real life example - I had negotiated a settlement of a domain name dispute
between two companies who produce semiconductor processing materials.  The
domain name was registered through register.com to company A.  We filled out
register.com's forms and sent them in.  Even though the registrant was
company A, Register.com wanted to see the driver's license of the admin
contact who, it turns out, was an ex-employee of company A, and nobody knew
where he had gone.

So, to avoid that hassle, I arranged with the current techie at Company A to
make sure to confirm a registrar transfer request from Register.com to my
account at Bulkregister, where I would be able to switch over all of the
registration data, and then have Company B initiate a registrar transfer to
whatever registrar they like.

The first part of that went smoothly, and I changed over all of the
registration data and requested that the attorney for Company B tell his
client to initiate a registrar transfer to move the domain name out of my
BulkRegister account.  It has been several weeks now, and this $500 per hour
gift to the legal profession still can't figure out that the ball is in his
court.  The domain name is registered to his client, and has all of his
client's data in it, they simply need to move it out of Bulkregister in order
to be able to make future updates to the data, or to pay the renewal fee
(since only the BR account holder for a domain name can pay for the renewal).
Like clockwork, this guy asks me about every week when *I* am going to
complete the transfer.

People like that are a waste of time, and I have counseled numerous domain
registrants to simply allow their domain names to expire when they are faced
with the determined ignorance of some attorneys who profess expertise in this
area.  As such, domain registrants are entitled to rely on the expiration
dates for which they contracted.