Cybersquatting n registrar's right to suppress account

[Ian]

Hi domainers,
I am in dire need of legal advice/assistance.
Let’s say that I together and a partner operate an account with a certain registrar. Then the registrar receives a complaint from a third party that one of my domains is in contravention of cybersquatting rules. Then he threatens to cancel all my names plus my account for creating "confusion".

1. Do you think that the registrar in question is right to suspend the domain in question (cybersquatting) plus all the other names registered under my account?
2. Aware of TM issues, do you think that a single or several names warrants a registrar the right to not to surpress a client's account but also cance all your names registered with her?
3. How would you approach the whole matter given that you have been given 10 days to raise any complaints failure to which the registrar threatens she would suppress your account completely?

To be fair I would like to convince the registrar at least not to effect her threat to cancel my account whose consequence will be killing all my registered domains.

Please feel free to post any general comments here however, if you are willing to assist me kindly PM and I will provide you with details plus the email that I have received from the registrar’s legal counsel.

Thank you very much for your willingness to offer your experiences and advice to me.

NB: At this stage until need be I am not going to publicly disclose here the name of the prominent registrar in question but I would to anyone interested thru a PM.

[dolansco]

I dont know the legalities of this .. but MOVE REGISTRAR FAST .

If the registrar has an issue with one of your domains , they should ask you to remove it from their company ... and ask politely .... you are infact a customer !

Moreover I feel it is not the registrars place to do such a thing .. Let the TM holder contact you directly ... or let them take the obvious route ( ICANN etc ) ...

All just my opinon....

PS ... MOVE the offending domain

[Ian]

Thanks dolansco for your worth advice and comments. One thing is that the registrar has not even pointed out to me what names/name violate TM (he lives me go guess). See letter PMed to you. FYI the registrar has further suspended any action inside my account so that I can't even change the DNS servers. Any other opinion is most welcome!

[denny007]

Could you let us know the registrar so everyone can avoid this registrar ? Thats actually imho important info to distinguish which country law this registrar has to follow.

[lyndonmaxewell]

It will become rather draggy in handling this issue if you are going to wait til helpful indiviuals PMed you one by one, although however much you may wish to keep the thing private. Your domains are at stake! I feel that more information shd be posted to bring this to better light.

[Ian]

Originally Posted by denny007

Could you let us know the registrar so everyone can avoid this registrar ? Thats actually imho important info to distinguish which country law this registrar has to follow.

Ok, I'll break my word not to disclose the Registrar-- it is EURODNS and the domains in question at stake mostly .fr with a few others with different cctlds.

[Dave Zan]

Unless we're talking about a really unique registrar here, all they'll really do is
lock up the name upon receipt of notice of dispute, be it UDRP or Court. The
name/s will then remain locked pending notice of the dispute's outcome.

If the registrar's service agreement says they'll "surpress a client's account
but also cance all your names registered" upon receiving notice from what I
described above, then definitely they're within their rights. But honestly I do
not believe they'll do that at all if they're like other registrars like Go Daddy et
al.

Maybe what you're saying is you or your partner aren't able to access it using
your registrar's control panel?

Edit: just saw you posted it's EuroDNS and ccTLDs are involved. The registrar
will do whatever their service agreement and their respective ccTLD policies
say.

To be sure, read the registrar's fine prints. That'll give you some clues.

[denny007]

Freddy from Eurodns is (was) active here, so he could answer here and explain why they are doing this shit. Never heard anyone else doing this. Even the horrible Godaddy let me drop a problematic .de domain without any fee or any problems.

[Malaysia]

yeah you shud call eurodns n talk to them nicely..

[domainuncle]

Hi Abraham
I am sorry to hear about this ... the best thing might be to contact eurodns ..
cheers

[FreddyS]

Hi friends, sorry for do not posting so much during the last weeks. I have been a bit busy with the www.domainermeeting.eu and some other stuff.
I´m hoping to be able to clarify some missunderstandings with this post.

- We received a threatning letter from an attourney representing a company called "FNAIM", which is quite big in France, regarding a cybersquatting domain (wwwfnaim.fr). It is important to note that AFNIC was cc'd in the letter which, given our "history" prompted a fast action.

- Customers of EuroDNS all have read article 11.1 of our Contract which says they should make sure they do not harm the copyright of others before registering, and if they do so, they expose themselves to suspension and to other consequences.

- EuroDNS does not delete names on its own, never has and never will. What we did is kindly remind Abraham of his contract with us, inform him about the letter (which he received) and ask him, in his own conscience, to delete the names he thought were cybersquatting - if any.

- Abraham sent us a list of domain names to delete, which we did. We have nothing against him and the suspension should have been lifted by now.

I'd like to point out that we did not "delete" the names on our own, as we do not want to judge what is or is not against the rules. Abraham choose to delete those names. We did not simply "suspend" the account but did so after receiving the threatning letter, which is standard procedure.

We wish to protect our customers and will never - for example - give out their details to a lawyer or interfere... But given our history with .FR, I wanted to be extra careful.

For everyone that is not familar with the background of EuroDNS and Afnic, please google for ".fr google eurodns" you will get about 10,000 Links that you can read. I would try to stay so clean as possible at the registries, please understand that ccTLD Registry are acting in National Law which is totally different to ICANN or Wipo. We saw already a couple of times that Afnic blocked 1000´s of Domains, and if I remember correctly in sweden and Netherland there was also something that a accredited Registrar has been deleted, correct?
I do not want to be rude, but there are laws that we all have to respect first and we get the best attention if we write it in the direct way. Do not missunderstand me you can try other registrars, EuroDNS got already his lesson, why do you think most registrar keep away from the wide band of ccTLDs or is a reseller of EuroDNS? Each country code has another Registry, another Laws.....
The wild west style simple do not work in the ccTLD market, there is no TLD around this globe where TM cybersquatting is allowed.

Freddy

[Ian]

Thanks Freddy and Eurodns for letting everyone in this forum know about the legal procedures and outcome of the case in point. I am proud to second what has been said...once bitten twice shy. I'll be cautious next time!!
Cheers,
abraham

[beatz]

Originally Posted by Freddy@EuroDNS

What we did is {...} ask him, in his own conscience, to delete the names he thought were cybersquatting - if any.

Just curious - what would your further procedure have been had he not decided to delete the names himself ?

Like, would you then as a reaction have closed his account or would you have just locked the very name(s) that were the matter of concern ?

Reason for asking is learning what your standard procedure is in such cases as that's one factor to decide which registrar to use and which not.

Thanks in advance !

[FreddyS]

hi beatz,
as I remember correctly, we did not had this situation for the moment. thanks to the understanding of all involved people we could solve all issues in the past. in all this cases it is very important to react quickly, and talk to the trademark owners. its cheaper deleting a name as paying 1000´s of dollars at court. if your name is 1 time listed in a TM-Case it impacts all futher cases.

Originally Posted by beatz

Just curious - what would your further procedure have been had he not decided to delete the names himself ?

Like, would you then as a reaction have closed his account or would you have just locked the very name(s) that were the matter of concern ?

Reason for asking is learning what your standard procedure is in such cases as that's one factor to decide which registrar to use and which not.

Thanks in advance !

[Acro]

Originally Posted by Freddy@EuroDNS

hi beatz,
as I remember correctly, we did not had this situation for the moment. thanks to the understanding of all involved people we could solve all issues in the past. in all this cases it is very important to react quickly, and talk to the trademark owners. its cheaper deleting a name as paying 1000´s of dollars at court. if your name is 1 time listed in a TM-Case it impacts all futher cases.

What happens if a small company does the same, claims they own a TM - do you automatically take their legal mumbo jumbo as gospel and in turn pass the ball onto the domain owner?