Panels say it Smells Like B.S.
Nirvana LLC — the company that owns the intellectual property from the late grunge band Nirvana — has won control of five domain names registered by an Australian man.
The company filed UDRP and aUDRP disputes against Darren Wilcox (Willcox) for the domain names nirvanadrums.com.au,
nirvanadrums.net.au, nirvanadrums.com, nirvanadrumsfilm.com and nirvanadrums.net.
Wilcox argued that he registered the domain names because of the concept of nirvana. However, his actions in negotiating a settlement with Nirvana certainly made it look like bad faith.
After saying he had out-of-pocket costs of about $2,500, Wilcox requested $1.5 million to transfer the domain names.
He later tried to justify the $1.5 million price tag (and threat of using the domains if no settlement was reached) by explaining that the $2,500 did not include “man hours, concept consolidation, trademark applications, future projects, and the amount of knowledge that the Respondent has about drums.”
That’s an awful lot of knowledge.
Wilcox also noted that Nirvana “is a considerable financial juggernaut”, a statement that will always look bad to UDRP panels.
Mike says
What cost of trademark applications? Does respondent own a registered trademark?
Mike says
Lets not knock him too much, you know sometimes you have to answer BS with BS . Ive seen sooo much BS in UDRP’s cannot blame him. As ive said before and will say again now, move your domains to a jurisidiction that will block UDRP’s !!
Acro says
What jurisdiction will block UDRPs? You can only block UDRPs will legal motions, and not indefinitely.
Darren Willcox says
“Smells like BS”… The name of the article says it all.
All decisions made were based on very ‘loose’ interpretations of my answers to actual requests by Nirvana LLC Lawyers. I never “demanded” anything!
The Nirvana LLC Lawyers tried their best to intimidate me across a number of years. At the time my ‘Nirvana Drums’ holdings were in the process of expanding to Drum manufacture and much much more…
Ever heard of David & Goliath?
Ever wondered where the catchy name ‘Nirvana’ originated (hint: it’s a 2,500 year old Sanskrit Religious concept, first written about in the Bhagavad Gita).
This case is not over by a long shot!
Darren Willcox
Chris Hughes says
Nevermind
Jens Weegar says
Hahaha!