Chancery Track, LLC v. Andrew Paul
FORUM Claim Number: FA2101001928125
22 January 2020
The Complainant was a business that provided financial information to clients. The Respondent was its former employee and “soon-to-be ex-husband” of Complainant’s principal. He had registered the domain name <chancerytrack.com> in his own name, would not hand it over and had diverted hits on the domain name to his own website. The panel quickly assessed that the Respondent was holding the disputed domain name as leverage in connection with pending divorce proceedings between himself and his “soon-to-be” ex-wife.
The Complainant did not have a registered trademark, so it had to prove a common law one, but the only thing it proved was that it was in business, which was not enough evidence. So there was no real evidence of a common law trademark and the claim failed at the first hurdle.
Anyway, the Panel could see that the domain name was “part of a larger and more divisive dispute that is currently being played out in divorce court in the State of Florida.” Thus, the “evidence-heavy” claim was outside the UDRP.
Accordingly, it was off to the divorce court where we hope the parties lived happily ever after.