U.S. Court of Appeals Finds ACPA Retroactive

In the recent case of Schmidheiny v. Weber, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit was faced with the issue of whether the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA") could be applied to a domain name registered before the Act was enacted. At issue was the defendant's registration and attempted sale of the domain "schmidheiny.com" to the plaintiff, Mr. Schmidheiny. The domain name had been originally registered in February 1999. ACPA was not enacted until November 1999. In June 2000, the defendant re-registered the domain with a different registrar in the name of his company. In November 2000, the defendant offered to sell the domain to the plaintiff. The plaintiff brought an action under the ACPA. The lower court determined that ACPA could not be relied on because it came into force after the domain name had been registered. The Court found that the Act could not be applied to a re-registration, only to the registration which created it. The lower court's decision was appealed. The Court of Appeals determined that application of the ACPA is not limited only to "creation registration", but also applies to re-registrations. The Court of Appeals found that the word "registration" could include a new contract at a different registrar and to a different registrant. Therefore, ACPA could be applied to the June 2000 re-registration of the domain under the name of a new company with a new registrar. In its decision, the Court of Appeals stated that to conclude otherwise would "permit the domain names of living persons to be sold and purchased without the living persons' consent, ad infinitum, so long as the name was first registered before the effective date of the Act". This was found to be contrary to the purpose of ACPA. For a copy of the decision at the Court of Appeals, visit: http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/opinarch/021668.pdf For a copy of the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, visit: http://www.gigalaw.com/library/anticybersquattingact-1999-11-29-p1.html