Sold at Auction in April, UDRP Filed on iPayments.com

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According to the UDRP database at the World Intellectual Property Organization, a UDRP was just filed for the iPayments.com domain name. Making this more interesting to me, the iPayments.com domain name was sold at a NameJet auction in April of 2015 for $1,877. There were 122 bids from 91 bidders in the  auction.

The WIPO database shows that the UDRP was filed by a company called iPayment, Inc. I first visited iPayment.com and was forwarded to a website operated by a company called CORE Business Technologies, which I do not believe is related to the UDRP complainant. I did a Google search for iPayment, Inc. and the first result is a website that operates on the iPaymentInc.com domain name. The logo on that website says iPayment.

A historical Whois search from March 6, 2015 shows that the former owner of iPayments.com was iPayment, Inc. A historical Whois search from March 12, 2015 shows the domain name registrant as “Pending Renewal or Deletion.” The domain name was registered at Network Solutions, and this likely explains why it went to auction at NameJet. Without knowing the actual details yet, it appears that the company previously owned the domain name before it went to auction.

iPayments.com currently resolves to a parked page.

As someone who regularly bids on NameJet, this will be an interesting case to follow. If my assumption is correct, I will be looking at the following aspects of the UDRP decision:

  • Can a company that once owned a domain name use a UDRP to retrieve it after an expired domain name auction?
  • Is a domain name like iPayments.com considered descriptive by a UDRP panel?
  • Did the company make an effort to acquire this domain name from the current owner before filing a UDRP?

Once the UDRP decision is published, I will follow up on this.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
  1. I hate those jerks who let their domain names expire and then abuse UDRP and file a claim against new owner. If I were a panelist, I would give them zilch.

  2. Not that it is the same but seen this too…

    Owner gets a threat of udrp or C&D.
    Owner lets name expire because of it.
    NJ picks it up and auctions it off.
    New owner gets screwed.

    Buying off the drop to me is ridiculous most times, grossly over priced, risk of mentioned above etc.

    There once was a reason for buying on drops, now very few and far between.

  3. Before offering expiring names for sales, registrars and domain sales platforms should be doing TM checks first.

    Go Daddy has started doing this (I recently had a domain that GD had sold to me as a BIN yanked off their sales platform). I was told that the expiring domains that they now sell have been run though a TM check and should be safe. Yeah, sure.

    The buyer may have a legal case against Namejet — In any case, this and other cases like this will be interesting to watch.

  4. I have sad news for you Jen, they could give two $#$@’s about you and do so much under handed yet technically legal stuff it disgusts me.

    I had two issues with them in the past and almost a third.

    1) Bought a name a company renewed and sold to me only to have them discover name was not in NS account after all. NS claimed they reversed the charge on their cc, BS! So the name goes to NJ for auction and gets $20K+, guess who is in bed Jen, NS+NJ at that time and maybe still they shared board members. So who’s side will they take, mine, yours?

    2)Went again to buy a name, owners went to renew and it was GONE, technically they are giving you a grace period and can take it for themselves at any time. This was discussed on another blog. Why did they take it early and not let it go to auction because someone made them a huge offer so it didn’t and they got it.

    Like I said they may technically be sound but they leave a bad taste in my mouth.

    Sorry but if you use NJ on a regular basis, sucker.

    • I haven’t used Namejet in years; I have serious issues with the Web.com constellation of companies (for all intents and purposes, Namejet being in bed with Register.com, Web.com, Network Solutions, New Ventures Services, etc., etc.), which I’m vocal about in Scamful.com.

      My situation was with Go Daddy; while they took the domain I was selling off their platform, they didn’t take the actual domain.

      I would rather have a root canal than do business with Namejet and its oily pals.

  5. I have faced a similar issue earlier and in my case I lost a domain which I had won via Auctions. Here is how it went. I bid on a domain which had expired. Won the domain and domain got transferred to my account. After 55 days after the domain had expired – I received a notice that the domain auction was being reversed, the amount I paid for the auction, refunded and the domain was taken back from my account! I could not transfer the domain out to another registrar as its under a 60 day lock in and the auction company took advantage of that and returned the domain to the previous owner stating they are within their rights to take back any domain post auction! I also registered a complaint with ICANN as to how once a domain is transferred to my account with whois record showing my name be taken back without my permission, but it was only referred back to the registrar who said nothing can be done as they are doing as per terms and conditions agreed. From that day on, I have been very careful at spending money on auctions at such sites as you never know till 60 days are over if you will really get to own the domain or not.

  6. I’ve had 3 domains I’ve purchased at GoDaddy auctions recently get “refunded and reversed”. What’s the point of having an auction where the owner can simply renew the domain?

    The domains should only go to auction after the grace period for redemption has lapsed. It costs me my time and that is something I can’t be reimbursed for.

  7. This will be an interesting case.

    As part of due diligence a potential buyer has to evaluate Trademarks and past usage of a dropping domain. A simple search on archive.org would reveal the previous owner.

    A scenario of the owner forgetting should also have been observed to have been a possibility.

    Seeing as the domain is similar to the company name I’d be wary of buying that name even if they dropped it on purpose (unless the name was obviously generic in nature).

    Can the buyer claim that the domain name is descriptive and that he didn’t act in bad faith? That’s going to be the crux of it I think.

  8. If the company would have been smart to renew their domain, they wouldn’t have wasted money in the UDRP process. They missed out allowing this domain to expire. $8-$15 renewal.

    IMO, why would any customer want to do business with a company who makes a mistake to not renew their company domain name?

    They can reclaim their domain name. They should pay the price to compensate the new owner. Why should they lose money after this company made a mistake?

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