Cybersquatters often either hide offshore, or they claim to be offshore, or they claim that they don’t have any money — ergo they are “judgment proof.”
Well, Marc Trachtenberg, the domain law equivalent of Mr. T, just kicked a cybersquatters’s ass. The squatter decided that he would rather not pay the $120,00 judgment. Since he believed that he was outside the reach of the U.S. courts, he just ignored it. Trachtenberg loaded up the van and brought a plan together — he foreclosed on the cybersquatter’s domain name portfolio.
Judgment Debtor Luis Zavala (“Zavala”) and any and each of his agents, servants, employees, registrars, registry, and attorneys, and those persons enabling or in active concert or participation with Zavala shall transfer to Bosh his domain name holdings, including but not limited to those holdings identified in Exhibit F of the Declaration of Marc Trachtenberg in Support of the Application. This order includes the operator of the “.com” top-level domain, Verisign, Inc., which is hereby ordered to immediately disable Zavala’s domain name holdings by changing the nameserver entries to nameserver entries designated by Bosh and transfer Zavala’s domain name holdings to Bosh’s registrar of choice. (source)
This is good news. If a cybersquatter is stealing from your business, you should have some recourse to collect a judgment. Now, Mr. T can auction off the domains (at least those that don’t infringe on anyone else’s trademark), and Mr. Zavala just lost his pay per click income from 800 domain names.
