Austin entrepreneur loses cybersquatting complaint to take down gripe site

Steve Papermaster failed to recover his personal name domain name in a cybersquatting dispute.

A long-time entrepreneur and investor in Austin has lost (pdf) a cybersquatting dispute against a gripe site.

Steve Papermaster filed the dispute against StevenPapermaster.com. A man in Australia, Mark Smith, set up a gripe site on the domain that paints Papermaster in a bad light. The site says Papermaster is a “conman” and outlines various disputes involving him.

Interestingly, Smith also managed to acquire Papermaster’s former domain name, StevePapermaster.com, through a court-appointed receiver.

World Intellectual Property Organization panelist Jeremy Speres found that Papermaster did not show that he had common law trademark rights in his name. The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) sets a fairly high bar for people to claim trademark rights in their personal name.

While Speres did not address the issues of rights or legitimate interests and registration in bad faith, Papermaster’s complaint would have probably failed even if he showed common law rights. Panelists generally deny cases involving gripe sites on freedom of speech grounds.

De Penning & De Penning represented Papermaster. No representative is shown for Smith, who likely defended the case himself.