Last month Slipknot sued whoever controls the domain slipknot.com, accusing them of breaching US cybersquatting laws and infringing the band’s trademarks.
The band possibly hoped the anonymous owner of the domain wouldn’t respond, allowing them to win the legal battle by default and take control of the domain name.
But now a lawyer who specialises in domain name disputes has filed a response on behalf of the domain’s anonymous owner, describing his client as the “lawful and long-time registrant” of the domain, and challenging Slipknot’s lawsuit on grounds of jurisdiction.
Because the band didn’t know who actually owns the slipknot.com domain by name, their lawsuit lists John Doe and ABC Corporation as defendants.
It’s a Cayman Islands company called Slipknot Online Services Ltd that has now hired domain name industry expert and attorney Jeff Neuman to respond on its behalf, apparently fearing that any failure to formally respond to the band’s lawsuit might result in a default judgment transferring the domain to the band.
In a filing made on Tuesday, Neuman said that his client “is the lawful and long-time registrant of the domain name, having continuously owned and maintained it for approximately 24 years”.
He added that Slipknot Online Services Ltd had hired him the same day it learned of the lawsuit and “the risk of default”. Neuman then “acted promptly to file this motion” to preserve his client’s rights.
The domain was first registered by its current owner in 2001, two years after Slipknot released their debut album. The band, which formed in 1995, was forced to use sliptknot1.com as a result.
It’s not clear why the band has gone legal now, 24 years later, though there has been a recent trend of artists becoming more litigious in attempts to protect their merchandise businesses, and it could be linked to that. The band registered the word Slipknot as a trademark in the US last year, having previously registered their logo as a trademark back in the early 2000s.
That said, domain names tend to be issued on a first come first served basis, and the fact you own the trademark in a word doesn’t necessarily give you a stronger claim to own the dot com domain using that word. The US anti-cybersquatting laws Slipknot cite only apply if the domain owner has acted in “bad faith”.
The slipknot.com domain displays promotional buttons, some linking to unofficial Slipknot merch sites. The band argue this “tricks unsuspecting visitors” into thinking they are reaching official websites.
Neuman will presumably argue that his client’s use of the domain has always been legitimate and it has never operated the domain in bad faith.
Neuman’s credentials in this area are pretty strong, having worked in the domain industry for decades, running domain name registry Neustar before it was acquired by industry giant GoDaddy.
Heavily involved in domain industry governance since the mid-1990s, he has sat on various committees convened by ICANN, the overseeing authority for all things domain name-related, and he runs a consultancy specialising in legal and policy issues relating to domain names and IP enforcement.
Before getting into any of the debate about what is and is not bad faith when it comes to domain names, Neuman is first challenging Slipknot’s lawsuit on jurisdiction grounds. His filing this week notes that Slipknot haven’t provided the paperwork necessary to establish whether the Virginia court - where the band filed their lawsuit - has jurisdiction over this dispute.
The main purpose of the filing, though, was to secure an extension so that Slipknot Online Services can properly respond to the lawsuit. “Given claimant’s two-decade history of ownership of the domain name without prior legal challenge”, Neuman writes, legal principles “favour allowing a fair opportunity to respond rather than a default judgment”.
