Case Number: FA2003001889900
Complainant: D'Agostino Markets, Inc. d/b/a D'Agostino Supermarkets
Represented by: Nicholas C. Katsoris
A three-member panel at the National Arbitration Forum has found New York’s famed D’Agostino Supermarket chain guilty of attempted reverse domain name hijacking. The panel handed up its decision after D’Agostino’s parent company, D’Agostino Markets, Inc., filed a UDRP to get a transfer of the domain dagostino.com, which was originally registered in 1996. The current owner, Louise D’Agostino Murphy, has owned the domain since 2006, after it was transferred to her by her father, Joseph D’Agostino, who was the original registrant.
The panel found the owners of the supermarket chain, as well as their attorneys, were well on notice there was little chance their case could succeed. For one, the arbiters found, the complainant knew Ms. Murphy’s maiden name was D’Agostino, as they had addressed cease and desist letters to her using that name. Furthermore, Ms. Murphy’s response to their letters had been written by noted intellectual property attorney John Berryhill, who provided considerable evidence to demonstrate Ms. Murphy’s rights and interests in the domain, as well as the provenance of the digital property.
“Complainant knew or should have known from Mr. Berryhill’s voluminous references to cases and law and that the domain name was registered and is being held by a member of the D’Agostino family, all set forth in detail, that its Complaint had no chance of succeeding on the merits,” the panel wrote. “It was, in short, a complaint that should never have been launched.”
While Mr. Berryhill’s previous documentation was submitted by Ms. Murphy for this case, her attorney in this proceeding was Brett E. Lewis, Esq.
D’Agostino Markets, Inc. was represented by New York attorney Nicholas C. Katsoris.
The RDNH ruling was handed up April 29, 2020.
Source: https://www.adrforum.com/DomainDecisions/1889900.htm