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Enom Stealing Domain Names from Registrants?

By Enrico Schaefer

The YourReview.us Blog is reporting that Enom unilaterally, without notice or legal justification transferred registration of its customers? domains to its own control. Apparently, Enom runs a script on its database of registrants looking for anyone who has registered any variation of the letters "enom." Keep in mind that that script could turn up literally thousands of domain names which are perfectly legitimate and have nothing to do with any trademark rights Enom may have.

Now here is where the story gets troubling. For your average domain registrant, the primary way to protect your trademark rights is through the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy; i.e. bringing a cybersquatting action to either WIPO or NAF. All other domain owners would have to establish all of the elements of cybersquatting in order to establish their trademark rights and force a domain transfer.

Enom apparently has taken the position that it is exempt from the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. Apparently, Enom believes it is legally justified in unilaterally and without notice taking domain names in which it has not established any trademark rights. This kind of unilateral and unchecked power over property belonging to others is astounding. Here is how the yourreview.us has described the situation.

"Apparently, every domain name containing the characters "enom" is being claimed by the mega registrar. No company can claim exclusive rights to a person's name or a word in general use. But, Enom is trying.

By not including a space before and after the characters "e-n-o-m," they hit words, and word combinations that were not infringing on their copyright and service mark. It seems that this is a case of automatic self-destruction complements of an incompetent legal staff.

We now know that potentially tens of thousands of innocent customers who registered domain names with Enom are now having their names unilaterally acquired by Enom without notice of any type, without anything in writing, without adequate explanation.

All customers got was a threatening email from Enom, stating that they had "infringed" upon Enom copyrights and that they would shut down their accounts (and their businesses) if customers "infringed" again.

According to their own user agreements, neither they (Enom), nor other parties have rights to transfer the ownership of a domain name owned by one of their customers. Apparently, the new rules allow registrars to take this action without review.

In a conversation with Enom's reseller manager (Joann), she stated that "90% of these are returned to the original customer..." but she had no idea why their acquisitions were so inaccurate."

The recent Registerfly debacle is yet another example that further oversight and regulation of domain registrars is critical if our domain registration system is to survive. Perhaps not surprisingly, Enom was one of Registerfly?s back-end service providers. Registerfly apparently was a reseller of Enom.

If you have been a victim of Enom?s blatant domain name grab, please let us know by sending us an email.

Full post as published by AntiCybersquatting Consumer Protection Act Blog on May 14, 2007 (boomark / email).