The names I tangled with:
PlatinumCard.com - American Expressed sent the C&D letter. I ignored it. They sent another one. I ignored it. Then, I had a private offer for $2000 on it.. So I took it :laugh:
NHLLive.com - The National Hockey League sent me a C&D letter. I did the research and they had no TM on "NHL Live", but the phrase was promoted on NHL games. After about 12 hours of digging in the WIPO decisions, I determined that I would lose if push came to shove. I consulted a domain name attourney and he thought my chances were 50% at best. He recommended I cough it up. I went back to the lawyer for the NHL (He was nice to deal with, but firm in his stance) and asked them for my registration fees back. After the name was transferred, I received a $20 check from the NHL! :yes:
Shamu.org - I never knew this was a TM, I simply thought it was a name. The lawyers for Annheuser Busch (ABI - ABI owns SeaWorld) followed the procedure and sent a C&D letter to the admin contact and to the admin address on file. However, it was an old snail mail address. I did the research and definitely knew I would lose this one. So I emailed them back and politely asked them to resend the C&D letter again via certified mailto my new address. They argued for three weeks over whether they should have to do this or not. I stated that email could be easily forged and that all I wanted was to receive a copy via certified US postal mail and I would turn over Shamu.org to them. They could have ended it with $3.50 in postage, but they were real butt-heads and still refused to send the C&D letter via certified mail. So, one day I get a police officer on my doorstep serving me a summons. Guess they wanted to spend a lot more than $3.50 to settle it up.
Anyway, over time i agreed to turn it over. They wanted me to pay $10,000 in statutory damages plus legal fees (which was in excess of $20,000). I laughed at them and got my lawyer in on it. Then they demanded $50,000 and lawyers fees, non-negotiable. We agian laughed and proved to them that I could not satisfy any sort of judgement. They backed off and they were supposed to write a letter to the registrar so it could be taken off registrar lock. That was like 4 months ago. They have not done that yet. . . MORONS.
-Bob