Cybersquatting Cases Update: Court Ruling in BME.com Cybersquatting Case Highlights Important Factors for Determining Whether a Defendant's Conduct Constitutes Cybersquatting

In a decision handed down yesterday, July 26, 2010, by District Judge Philip M. Pro, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, some very important factors from cybersquatting case law were re-iterated. Judge Pro denied Plaintiff Gregory Ricks’ motion for summary judgment and denied Defendant BMEZINE.com, LLC’s cross-motion for summary judgment in the ongoing cybersquatting lawsuit over control of the profitable three-letter domain name BME.com.

Before ordering that the parties have 30 days to file the proposed joint pretrial order, Judge Pro enumerated some very important determining factors and conclusions regarding the current anti-cybersquatting laws. Those points were first posted in an article on DomainNameWire.com but have been re-produced below;

XXX.com Domain Name Soon Up for Sale, or Reserve Now for Only $7,000,000

Unless someone matches the reserve price of $7,000,000 by August 18th, the thought-provoking (and hopefully money making) three letter domain name ‘XXX.com’ will go up for sale at the DomainFest New York City auction.

Bari from Moniker has been posting information about this sale and the ‘XXX.com’ domain name. According to her, in April 2010 ‘XXX.com’ received 1,510,670 visits and in May 2010 it saw 1,513,457. Moreover, the press coverage surrounding the announcement that the .xxx top level domain (TLD) extension will be available has had a stunningly positive impact on the value of ‘XXX.com’, “traffic has more than doubled to 120K uniques per day and revenue has doubled since the announcement of the .xxx extension becoming available.” This dramatic increase in traffic is surprising given that xxx.com is only displaying a parking page (although it being a parked page likely explains why there are so many ‘unique’, and thus not repeat, visits per day).