Hi all, it looks like I may require a lawyer in the State of Washington.

[Bill Roy]

Unfortunately a situation has arisen which by the looks of things may soon escalate to legal action in court against another party with whom I have a contract. The contract states that the agreement (contract) shall be goverened by the laws of the State of Washington. It would therefore I think be a wise move on my part to engage the services of a Washington licensed attorney who is versed in this industry.

My major problem is that I am in the UK and therefore have no terms of reference by which to choose an attorney in the State of Washington, therefore any recommendations pointing me towards an appropriate attorney would be much appreciated.

Sorry I cannot be more specific at the moment about the possible case but as I have said above it seems that this is likely to end up in the courts and until that stage is reached I do not want to jeopodise a possible non-court settlement of the situation.

I would prefer PM contact or for those who know me please email me.

Many thanks in advance for any and all help in this matter.

[Bill Roy]

Many thanks for all the responses, all were helpful.

Unfortunately with information that has come to light over the weekend it now seems almost inevitable that the only place this escalating problem will be sorted out is in the courts. Ah well, I guess at least the lawyers will make money!

[domaingenius]

This just highlights to me the increasingly great importance of Jurisdiction both of the Registrar you use, your Registrant data and of course agreements. I have increasingly started moving
domains that are important to us to Registrars that are located in my own Jurisdiction (UK) so that if any challenges are made they are bound to UK jurisdiction and thus I can act in person as and when required ,rather than have to pay squillions to a lawyer unless I want to.

DG

[Banned: adonivideo]

Doesn't matter what the contract says IMO, wipo is the real forum for anything domain related, as to the issue of who really owns the name. They trump every court in the world by treaty, all courts bow to international rulings by wipo, from what I understand, maybe I'm wrong, but by treaty, international IP court trumps even the USSC.

If you get a wipo decision saying you own it, you own it, now in other matters, say a sales contract or something or a lease contract, yeah, local laws can be called for in agreements.

But ultimately any ownership claim, that's wipo property, as to who owns what on the net. A good argument can be made that NO COURT actually controls the net, none, with possibly one exception, wipo.

The net is not the real world, it's like ether, cyber space, so from the gate you can challenge any court on 'jurisdiction' and rock the whole system, show me proof cyber ether is under your control court, it's not. NO ONE OWNS THE NET. Now there is a governing body, ICAAN and WIPO, so one controls ultimately the whois and one settles who can own the whois.

So ultimately, if you have any real ownership issues, it should go to wipo, IMO.

So that was mostly in regards to the poster saying they're moving stuff to UK.

Well, if you got a guy in any place on planet, that says he has a valid claim on your whois record, they can go to wipo, it don't matter where you are, where the registrar is, all registrars are subject ti Icaan and they use wipo to settle disputes.

Good luck to first poster, since he sounds like it's an agreement other than a registration of a name issue.

Plus wipo is relatively cheap to argue in, real simple rules and cases. All the courts outside of wipo are contradicting each other over this new area of law.

IMO

[domaingenius]

Doesn't matter what the contract says IMO, wipo is the real forum for anything domain related, as to the issue of who really owns the name. They trump every court in the world by treaty, all courts bow to international rulings by wipo, from what I understand, maybe I'm wrong, but by treaty, international IP court trumps even the USSC.

If you get a wipo decision saying you own it, you own it, now in other matters, say a sales contract or something or a lease contract, yeah, local laws can be called for in agreements.

But ultimately any ownership claim, that's wipo property, as to who owns what on the net. A good argument can be made that NO COURT actually controls the net, none, with possibly one exception, wipo.

The net is not the real world, it's like ether, cyber space, so from the gate you can challenge any court on 'jurisdiction' and rock the whole system, show me proof cyber ether is under your control court, it's not. NO ONE OWNS THE NET. Now there is a governing body, ICAAN and WIPO, so one controls ultimately the whois and one settles who can own the whois.

So ultimately, if you have any real ownership issues, it should go to wipo, IMO.

So that was mostly in regards to the poster saying they're moving stuff to UK.

Well, if you got a guy in any place on planet, that says he has a valid claim on your whois record, they can go to wipo, it don't matter where you are, where the registrar is, all registrars are subject ti Icaan and they use wipo to settle disputes.

Good luck to first poster, since he sounds like it's an agreement other than a registration of a name issue.

Plus wipo is relatively cheap to argue in, real simple rules and cases. All the courts outside of wipo are contradicting each other over this new area of law.

IMO

Have you read the US Court of Appeals decision in the matter of Barcelona.com in which they set aside the WIPO decision and pretty much called the WIPO
UDRP procedure 2nd class ?.

DG

---------- Post added at 12:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:50 PM ----------

As for WIPO being the place to take complaints. Yes that may well be the case if you are trying to take a domain FROM someone , but me if Im defending myself
then I would take it into Court immediately I received a complaint alleging something against a domain I owned. As for costs, all it would cost me would be the
Court fees which are a few hundred as I have all the case law I need.

DG

[Bill Roy]

Just to explain, this concerns a 'development company' and nothing to do with WIPO, etc.. Basically they have tried not to honour the contract (which they wrote), and therefore it seems that it may well end up in court for breach of contract. (The joke is that yesterday they actually tried to twist things saying I had breached the contract! I have had it explained to me that this is a normal tactic in such circumstances, but undoubtedly it will be sorted out in court, and I am sure some eagle-eyed member here will then report the 'what' and 'who' is envolved, if not I am absolutely certain it will appear on domainstryker, etc..)

I must agree with 'domaingenius' though that of course given the chance I would rather have the case heard hear in the UK if for no other reason than costs. But at least in the States the case will be public and when the facts are out it will be totally public.