A UDRP was filed against the three letter ATC.com domain name. The UDRP was filed at the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), and it is case #1722646. I noticed the UDRP filing this evening when searching UDRPSearch.com. In my opinion, this LLL.com domain name could be worth six figures.
ATC.com was registered nearly 30 years ago – in September of 1990 to be more precise. I don’t see many UDRP proceedings involving domain names that are this old. The current registrant of the domain name is a company called BatchMaster Software, Inc. from Laguna Beach, California. The oldest archived record found in DomainTools’ Whois History Tool is from 2001. According to that Whois record, the domain name had been owned by a company called Advanced Technology Center.
A bit of research on BatchMaster and Advanced Technology Center shows that they are essentially the same entity. An article in PCIMag.com from 2000 details how the companies were involved in an acquisition: “eWorkplace Solutions, a business unit of Advanced Technology Center, and BatchMaster Software Corp. announced an agreement under which eWorkplace Solutions will acquire BatchMaster, a process-manufacturing software supplier based in Seal Beach, CA.”
When I visited ATC.com this evening, the domain name did not resolve to a working website. When I visited www.ATC.com (notice the www), the domain name resolved to an under construction page that stated “This is the website address for: Advanced Technology Center A software development company providing programming tools for software developers.” Archive.org shows an archived version of the website in 1997, and Advanced Technology Center was listed on that website indicating that this company owned the domain name back then and likely earlier.
Because the UDRP was filed at NAF, the complainant in this case is not listed and won’t be known publicly until the decision is published. This means I am unable to see an important aspect of the UDRP, so I don’t have all the information. Based on what I am seeing though, I can’t understand why anyone would think the domain name could have been registered and is being used in bad faith (in addition to the other aspects of the UDRP that need to be proven), so I am not really sure why this UDRP was filed.
I will reserve judgment until I see the facts published in the decision, but I am keeping an eye on this valuable 3 letter .com domain name.
Update: UDRP was won by the domain owner, defended by the ESQWire.com law firm. More info here.
Could it be somebody’s sense of entitlement to someone else’s asset just because their business acronym is ATC too?