The Domain Name Wire reported on the surprisingly ridiculous outcome of the case around the UltaChat.com domain name. Its existence was noticed by the company Ulta Beauty, which operates a chain of cosmetic stores in the United States. The company considered the existence of such a domain as an infringement on its copyrights and hired lawyers from the law firm Barnes & Thornburg LLP to resolve the issue. They filed a complaint under the UDRP Uniform Domain Dispute Resolution Policy to the National Arbitration Forum, and then the fun began.
The domain registrant, having received notice of the complaint, turned to the lawyers of Barnes & Thornburg LLP himself. He explained that he purchased the UltaChat.com domain along with several other domain names while planning to launch a messaging app. As a result, the project was launched on a different domain, and the UltaChat.com name remained unused. The registrant offered not to bring the case to trial in the National Arbitration Forum and expressed his readiness to transfer the rights to manage the domain name to Ulta Beauty free of charge.
What happened next is absolutely impossible to understand: Barnes & Thornburg LLP lawyers either did not notice the registrant's message at all, or did not bother to respond to it. As a result, the case came to court. And the position of the registrant turned out to be closer and more understandable to arbitrator David Sorkin than the actions (more precisely, inaction) of lawyers. In his sentence, he noted that the registrant acquired the domain with legitimate intentions, and the willingness to transfer it to Ulta Beauty for free indicates that he also had no desire to derive any benefit from managing the domain to the detriment of the company's interests. As a result, the arbitrator decided to dismiss the complaint. And now the attorneys at Barnes & Thornburg LLP are likely to have a very unpleasant explanation with Ulta Beauty clients.
