A second plaintiff has entered the legal fray against GoDaddy concerning the controversial practice of reclaiming expired domain names.
In August, Crisby Studio AB initiated a lawsuit after GoDaddy retracted the domain calor, which the company had purchased for $11,405 at GoDaddy Auctions just two months earlier. Crisby had already begun a joint venture aimed at developing the site into a business when the domain was clawed back.
Now, an additional plaintiff has emerged with a similar case. Prime Loyalty, which acquired the domain butane.com for $19,755 in a GoDaddy expired domain auction, claims that GoDaddy also reclaimed its domain approximately two months after the purchase. Like Crisby, Prime Loyalty had partnered with another company to establish a business based on its newly acquired domain.
Historical records reveal that both calor.com and butane.com were previously registered to Calor Gas Ltd of Great Britain through 123-Reg, a registrar owned by GoDaddy.
In communications with Prime Loyalty, a GoDaddy representative attributed the domain’s return to a technical error that had prevented the original registrant from renewing it. The representative stated, “We realize that in circumstances like this, the party we recover the domain from is not going to be very happy with the outcome. That said, we believe that fixing the original issue and returning the domain was the right thing to do. If the roles were reversed and an error on our part caused you to miss an opportunity to renew one of your domains, we would take the same actions.”
Initially, GoDaddy offered Prime Loyalty in-store compensation to cover the costs of two additional domains purchased after acquiring butane.com. Prime Loyalty had spent $1,999 on butane.net and $5,000 on butane.org, both obtained through GoDaddy. Subsequently, GoDaddy raised its compensation offer to $10,000. However, Prime Loyalty contended that the expenses incurred while establishing its business exceeded this amount.
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