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Nearly lost a domain due to eligibility [storytime]

Mdomains

Regular Member
A few years ago I purchased a generic com.au domain as it matched the .com and I wanted to avoid possible brand confusion with the .com.

When the business was sold, the .com.au was left with old STATE BN when I should have transferred it right away.

Many many years later an email was received that there had been a complaint and we had 30 days to come back with a reply to prove our eligibility.
I was pretty stressed and after doing my own research I approached Cooper Mills who handled our multiple trademarks, but they said they couldn't help with these types of issues.
At this stage I was thinking if they can't help, what chance do I have, and then immediately was trying to work out the possible heavy cost of getting the name on the drop.

WebCentral made a few suggestions and one of them was to find old paperwork from during the business switch (nearly 10 years ago), and they even extended the timeline to enable us to do this, but we had great trouble finding the archived paperwork in government archives since the system had changed drastically. In all this time we kept WebCentral up to date and they really did make an effort to guide us.

Finally we were able to make a connection and prove the details and license had an unbroken chain of eligibility over the decade, gave in the evidence and kept the name.

I was so thankful and relieved we kept the name, and I gave huge marks to WebCentral who were always responsive and truly wanted to help to resolve this.

I just wish I knew who complained, I guess it is one strategy to get a name.
 

Joel

Top Contributor
The anonymous complaints process really should be changed. I can't see any reason for any one to lodge a complaint, other than attempting to get it to dropped from the registry.

Glad you got it sorted!
 

trellian

Top Contributor
It is no longer an anonymous complaint if the domain is on the new auDA policies.
Registrars now get the complaint directly and it is upto the Registrar if they wish to keep the complaint anonymous or not. auDA do not have any rules on this and Registrars can chose their own policies if to disclose or not who the complaint was originally submitted from.

Drop has a clear policy that it will share the details of the complainant with the domain registrant.

So if they got the complaint directly then reach out to them and ask them for those details.
 

Mdomains

Regular Member
Thanks for your replies Joel & Trellian. This complaint was resolved in 2018/2019, I never got to post my experience, but maybe it isn't too late to ask WebCentral who made the complaint, not that it matters but just for my own interest, though they were contacted by AUDA so possibly won't get far if it was initiated at AUDA rather than the registrar. You know, after the replies I think I'll go ask...
 

trellian

Top Contributor
if that old, then the registrar would not have the details of the complaint and that would have gone directly through auDA. So that is a dead end.
 

trellian

Top Contributor
auda have also requested Drop to not provide such details as well, though I do not see why that can be the case when we can specify our own privacy policies relating to any contacts made to the company. If the registrar is to act as policy checkers that auDA used to do, the details that are submitted belong to the Registrar and they should be able to do what they like with those details as long as they conform to the respective privacy laws.
 

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