Some domain investors received an email from Enom’s legal department yesterday notifying them about a subpoena that was received by the company. Enom sends these emails when the recipient’s information was found during an internal (Enom) search for documents related to the subpoena. If an investor received this email, it could be related to a Scratch Foundation lawsuit that was written about by Andrew Allemann earlier this year.
Domain industry attorney John Berryhill mentioned the subpoena email in a series of tweets yesterday. In the three tweets, John offered additional details and some commentary about the subpoena:
Attention recipients of today’s obscure subpoena notice from Enom. What is happening is that @DavidWeslow is engaged in a fishing expedition in this lawsuit: https://t.co/ea6jXKfQTb 1/3
— John Berryhill (@Berryhillj) June 11, 2019
Not having any specific evidence of bad faith against the plaintiff in relation to that senior dictionary word domain, Weslow is going to cherry pick all the names that Lahoti ever bought or sold as “pattern” evidence to obscure that the mark is junior to the domain name. 2/3 pic.twitter.com/Px2osyavZr
— John Berryhill (@Berryhillj) June 11, 2019
So, if you ever bought or sold a domain name from or to one of Ravi Lahoti’s companies, then your data comes up in response to this part of the subpoena to Enom, which is why you received the notice from Enom. No more calls, please. 3/3 pic.twitter.com/cRu9pur7wj
— John Berryhill (@Berryhillj) June 11, 2019
Of note, John referenced evidence against the plaintiff but he meant defendant.
No enough money to pay for a domain like scratch.org, but enough money to pay for a turncoat like Weslow.
Sad!
I never scratch my org in public. My parents taught me its not decent.
One guys working, ones guys tweeting all day… #toomuchfreetime
John probably got a bunch of calls and emails from people and was saving himself some time explaining his thoughts publicly rather than billing clients for calling about the same thing.
Bill, I see you have hired the same lawyer for your own “in rem” lawsuit over a one word .com. Must be Mr Weslow’s specialty now?
Thats one possibility. Another is no one called and he’s just twitter trolling cause he has too much free time on his hands.
Good deeds never go unpunished it seems.
…and someone is too dumb to realize that since I posted a screenshot of a portion of the subpoena, I have a copy from one of the people who contacted me about it. It’s not a public document.
Doh!
You must be swamped these days #twitterworkdontcount
Bill is just pissed because John trashed his buddy Weslow on social media.
While Bill’s concern for my time and use of social media is touching, and I’ll be sure to ask him for his help if I ever need managing either of them, there is another aspect to the data production that your readers, like many others I’ve heard from, may find helpful.
I have also heard from at least three people who have never had any direct relationship with the defendant in the lawsuit at all, so there are probably several others in the same boat who may find this useful to understand why they received the notice.
Even if you did not have any dealings with the defendant, you may have owned a name which dropped and was later registered by the defendant, or you may have picked up an expired name that, at some previous point in time was registered to the defendant. Additionally, you may be two steps or more removed from the defendant in a chain of owners.
Because the scope of the subpoena would include any registrant data associated with a domain name which was ever associated with the defendant, then your data can come up even if you never had any dealings with the defendant.