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I woke up this morning to an email that said “We have received a Temporary Restraining Order relating to domains in your account. We have disabled the domains.” Apparently domain investor Joel Williams and the company he was involved with BrandLab, are having some issues and BrandLab is claiming Joel sold or let domains expire that he did not have the right to sell or let expire? Why does this involve me? Because I bought a few of these domains, picked up a few at some domain auctions, and registered a few when they expired. I have also sold of few of them already. I am not sure about the BrandLab / Joel Williams relationship or any of the reasons behind the issues they are having but it seems these issues are between the defendant (Joel Williams) and the plaintiffs (Kimberly Dano, Roy Dano, Peter Azuolas, and BrandLab, LLC) and not the current domain holders like myself. I asked domain attorney Howard Neu what he thought and here is his response:
My suggestion at this point is to do nothing while hopefully the Tennessee Court sorts out the domains no longer owned by the Defendant. If nothing is done within the next 10 days, then you might need to file a motion with the court to release the names that you and your group owns as the Defendant no longer owns them. Howard Neu.
There are about 2200 domains listed in the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), domains that are currently registered have been “frozen” at 5 registrars (Name.com, Dynadot.com, GoDaddy.com, Enom.com, DomainSite.com), about 450 domains in the list have expired and are available to register right now, this makes no sense at all? Frozen means the court ordered: “The parties are restrained from the transfer, sale, encumbrance or disposition of the assets of BrandLab,LLC except in the regular course of business, pending the temporary injunction hearing.” So now about a dozen domains I have are in this list and frozen at the registrars.
I won’t even go into all the reasons why I am sure what is happening here is wrong and nonsensical on many levels, but, if you have any thoughts on it or questions or this affects you I would love to hear about it.
TheDomains.com posted all about it here
Here is a copy of the TRO and Court Order
The case especially at .tv is that many domains bought and have new owners from expiring aftermarkets of the various registrars.
This happened because most of names have a quality due to the fact that most registered during .tv goldrush.
So why registrars froze client domains they sold to them?
Have an idea for good programmers to earn fastly $$$
Make the joelchecking script. It has to check if Joel had a name in the past in order to avoid buying it at aftermarkets or register if dropped.
For mechanics a good idea maybe is the domain defroster?
Or just a warmer is enough?
you don’t need to be a ‘domain attorney’ to know initially we just holdfire
also theres no way I’m paying money to file a court paper
plus domains are golbal
I’m in the UK, and some little twat or rather more than 1 twat in the U.S doesn’t do their jobs correctly
ie. the court and the attorney
the court should have require a simple screenshot of all domains in each registrar account to prove ownership and/or recipts
second, they could have done a bulk whois check on domains
they decided to be lazy and unethical
third, godaddy didn’t even email me to notidy me
i found one domain on hold in my account
quite incredible how everyone can fail on that side of the pond
it was a domin i have owned at least 2 years from the drop and was prob going to let drop anyway next month, but principle at stake here
what a dangerous precedent, and how unprofessional is that ‘court’
anyone have the attorneys email so she can get emails from the people she screwed up with?
I believe if any company wants a domain or feels they have rights to . They need to purchase it. If it is out there for purchase it is fair game. TM or not . They buy the one they want. Then they wait & when someone buys a similar domain. They cry out they have a right to it. It only they are too cheap to buy all available domains that is related to their business. So I believe if I buy it first too bad for you. If you want it then buy it from me . Not take me to court and take it from me.
two keywords for the court and attorney
‘due diligence’
making a mockery of their ‘profession’
This list has some names without extension. Now i am thinking to apply for a blanc gtld at ICANN, not even the dot needed. But beware if i will make it, do not register the names without extension from this list, i will froze all instantly.
Agree with you Guy, it is like a parody.
And still can not understand what plaintiffs claim
Mark,
Sorry to hear you got caught in the middle of this mess. Hopefully it gets resolved soon. I agree, not sure how they can freeze a domain which already has a new owner. It doesn’t make sense at all.
just wanted to apologise if sounding anti-american
I have hundreds of legendary U.S friends
your courts and governance suck
not too dis-similar from the UK lol
I’m not offended, I agree…
At least me, i am nor American, i am in EU, so probably this is the reason i can not understand what happens in US
For anyone who has domains locked, the name of the lawyer is Jennifer A. Lawson.
Contact information can be found @ lawsonlawoffice.com
Brad
Thanks Brad
Isn’t New Mexico outside of USA and part of Mexico?
You should be immuned from all these freakin damn yankees frivolous lawsuits.
nope – that’s Old Mexico
Personally, I don’t like what is happening here. I am from the US and I certainly don’t think this is right. It’s hard to imagine any attorney from Nashville or Wherever that seemingly knows nothing about domains or how the registration of domains process works can get a Tennessee or Wherever court to put a freeze on domain assets legitimately acquired and owned by 100’s of entities around the world.
Is this going to be some new thing domain and website owners wake up to in the morning? It’s almost like reverse hijacking en masse. We should get an affected group together, get representation, and countersue, not for money, for precedent. And I question BrandLab and the plaintiffs that created this situation as much as I question the attorneys and courts that probably don’t have a clue about domains and let this become a reality.
I doubt there is dispute that if Joel or BrandLab let a name expire and it was newly registered at GoDaddy or Enom that the new registrant, or the registrar, did anything wrong. Yet if you did this GoDaddy and Enom were US court ordered to freeze your asset today?
I wonder what BrandLab is thinking and how far they are going to take this? Are they accusing Joel of something? I Remember the Sex.com thing. Is that what they are going to do here or is this just frivolous?
I recall talking to Joel/”In Stealth Mode” on the phone once, but the conversation lasted several hours! Very interesting guy. Will now read this paper to see what is going on. Domaining is a small world.
I received a response from Ms. Lawson. The TRO is supposed to apply to parties to the lawsuit, not third parties. She said they will be working closely with registrars to resolve this as quickly as possible.
I would suggest any third party who has domains involved contact Ms. Lawson to resolve this.
Brad
Here is the much appreciated response I received from the attorney, Ms. Lawson:
Mark, thank you for your email. We are working with the registrars to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. The court issued a temporary restraining order affecting the parties to the lawsuit only. While we appreciate the registrars’ quick action, it appears that third parties are being affected. That was not our intent (and not part of the court order).
Dynadot Reply :
We received an updated TRO which clarified this issue. Your domains have been re-enabled. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Manos – “Sorry for the misunderstanding” does not cut it for me. Did they misunderstand a court document, or did they fully obey its orders that were inaccurate? If it’s the latter, you might be wanting to dig deeper.
I want to thank attorney Howard Neu for reposting this post on his blog:
NeusNews.com
I Also had a Domain Frozen Thursday of which has been re-enabled by Dynadot today..
I was at first really worried until I checked out your blog and saw I wasn’t the only one.
I even replyed to Dynadot’s email regarding the frozen Domain with some harsh words as I felt that they didn’t look at the facts, and need to un freeze my domain now!!! I don’t think it made a diff, but am happy that it’s over as I really value the domain that they Disabled.
iThanx..
I might be a traitor but I have been communicating with BrandLab’s attorney Jennifer Lawson, I must say she has been very attentive and responsive to my concerns, I am aware this does not excuse the sloppy way this all unfolded:
I said:
You have created quite the stir in the domain community, I assume you are aware of this? I think this is just the beginning, you have opened up “Pandora’s Box”. Lots of domain blogs including mine are lit up over this unfortunate and really unnecessary unfolding of events.
She replied:
I am aware of it, and I regret the way I’ve come to the attention of the domain community. It was not the plaintiffs’ intention to affect property belonging to third parties unrelated to the dispute; the Temporary Restraining Order related only to the parties to the lawsuit. I hope our prompt response – and the quick action of the registrars to unlock the domain names – will help.
I do appreciate your courtesy in bringing it to our attention and helping
us resolve the situation.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Jennifer
Amazing. So the plaintiffs froze and attempted to seize property without first verifying ownership? That’s like putting a wrongful lien on someone’s property; there are penalties for this.
@Acro
Agree with you, also dynadot never admitted they misread the court order. Court order was between 2 parties not third parties, could just block the dynadot accounts at document. Misunderstanding ….
What is their real problem, I do not really know why they could not take the names before you, if it is their trade mark.
Man, If you can fight it out, it will only make your domains become more attractive to traffic; which offcourse could make you more money.
Please don’t give up the fight keep it up and I wish you good luck. Cheers.