The owner of Screams.com, the current owner of Cutting Edge Haunted House Theme Park has recently lost the domain name that he used to boost his terrifying business to a direct competitor via the UDRP process.
scream/skrēm/
Verb: Give a long, loud, piercing cry or cries expressing extreme emotion or pain.
Noun: A long, loud, piercing cry expressing extreme emotion or pain.
Associated with theme parks and haunted houses, the word scream has long been synonymous with adrenalin and thrill rides. But the owner of screams.com, who also owns the Cutting Edge Haunted House Theme Park, has recently lost the domain name that he has owned for the past fourteen years to a direct competitor in a UDRP claim.
The verdict, reached just in time to cash in on the big business brought in America by Halloween (31st of October) ruled in favour of the complainant and meant that the registrant was forced to transfer the domain name to the rightful owner, in the eyes of the UDRP forum.
The owner of the domain name registered it in 1996 and redirected it to the official web page of his site, although recently it was changed so the page offered no redirect and linked directly to the site of the theme park. It has been ruled that the owner of the site registered it in bad faith to glean any traffic from his direct competitor, the owner of the trademark of Screams LLC, another haunted house business in a very close area. It was also noted that the domain name was registered in very close proximity to the competitors registering the trademark, and therefore deemed that the name was deliberately registered in bad faith to further skim business from the competition, especially due to the close geographical location of the two businesses.
The complainant submitted an affidavit to prove that over the past fourteen years, Screams LLC have tried to contact the registrant to lay stake to their claim for the domain, with no response, and have therefore taken the dispute to the UDRP process.
The current registrant claimed that there was not a trademark issue seeing as the word ‘scream’ is generic and used in all aspects of haunted house literature, but eventually the case was left in favour of Screams LLC, and the registrant was forced to relinquish the name to their competitor. Should he wish to resell the domain he will have no trouble!