Theme Park Insider published an article about a lawsuit involving the owners of a theme park called Evermore and Taylor Swift. According to the article, the owners of the theme park filed the lawsuit “claiming that Swift’s album title, “Evermore,” infringed upon the park’s trademarked name.” While I am sure this is going to be an interesting case for some people to follow, the most interesting aspect of it comes from the section of the lawsuit regarding the theme park’s investment in the Evermore brand.
According to the complaint, which can be viewed on this Scribd page, the company purchased “the domain name EVERMORE.COM at a cost of $300,000.00.” I do not see a sale record for Evermore.com on NameBio, but that is not at all surprising given the fact that the vast majority of domain name sales are transacted privately and are not reported.
I can’t tell precisely when the domain name changed hands, but it appears to have been sometime in late 2017. In 2017, the domain name was owned by a registrant in Arizona, and in 2018, the domain name appears to be owned by the theme park. Because GoDaddy prevents some Whois information from being archived, the date the domain name changed hands is a bit unclear to me.
Archived pages on Archive.org appear to confirm a 2017 transaction. The website for Evermore Enterprises appeared on Evermore.com as late as June of 2017, and the theme park’s website appeared on Evermore.com in August of 2017.
I am not sure if Ron Jackson would add a domain name sale to his DNJournal sales chart based on information in a lawsuit. If he does decide this is sufficient to archive the sale, it would tie for the 18th largest publicly reported domain name sale of 2017. Advance.com was also sold for $300,000 in 2017.
Evermore.com is a great domain name, and it’s nice to hear about domain name sales like this.
It seems pretty obvious that this is a ill-conceived “shakedown” on Taylor Swift because she is such a visible target.
I don’t think this lawsuit will get very far with the judge. In fact, I think they are seriously risking a jaw-dropping counterclaim by Taylor.
Seller made out like a bandit!!
I didn’t think you could trademark titles — albums, songs, books, movies — except in the franchise ones like Star Wars, Harry Potter, Startrek, Indiana Jones, etc
This suit will get dismissed unless Taylor pays a nuisance settlement which I doubt she will
have to admit – I love ever(one word).com domains — sold several over the years but no 6 figure sales like evermore.com