UDRP LA Rams vs MapleDots | Dispute Denied (17.Viewing)

MapleDots said:

It appears the story is making an impact with the daily visitor count up quite substantially.

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MapleDots said:

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The whole system needs a reboot where the complainant should be forced to pay all legal costs, and a fee, to compensate the domain owner should their complaint be denied. A 10k deposit to file does not seem unreasonable in my opinion and it would assure a lot of these frivolous filings would not happen.

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Aquarius said:

put ads on there to make some money

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FM said:

I guess just stay away from sport ads

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(December 15, 2025) - The World Intellectual Property Organization has denied The Los Angeles Rams LLC's request to transfer rams.com to the NFL team, finding that the domain's owner had not registered or used it in bad faith.

Los Angeles Rams LLC v. Mardian, No. D2025-3761, (WIPO Arb. Dec. 4, 2025).

In a Dec. 4 decision, a three-member WIPO panel concluded that while the registrant had offered to sell the domain to the Rams for millions, the bid was plausible and did not constitute bad faith under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, or UDRP.

The decision hinged on the panel's conclusion that "rams" is a common dictionary word and that the owner had received a separate, legitimate purchase offer from an unrelated third party.

LA Rams file complaint
The rams.com domain name was first registered in May 1995.
The Los Angeles Rams filed a complaint in September with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, arguing that because rams.com was intrinsically tied to its famous brand, the football team deserved to hold the domain.

Frank Mardian, who owns the domain reselling business MapleDots.ca, bought the domain from a previous registrant in November 2022 for CA$50,000. The purchase was part of his business of registering and selling domain names that have value due to their shortness and use of common words, according to the WIPO panel's decision.

The website at rams.com leads to a holding page advertising the site for sale and referring customers to mapledots.ca.
The football team, which has used a "Rams" trademark since 1937, holds a variety of registered trademarks in the U.S. that include variations of "Rams," "LA Rams" and "Los Angeles Rams." The team's main website is at therams.com.

'A genuine offer'
The panel, made up of arbitrators Warwick A. Rothnie, Clive N.A. Trotman and Gerald M. Levine, determined that while the Rams met most of the UDRP's qualifications to divest an owner of a domain name, it failed to show that Mardian had registered and used the domain in bad faith.

The Rams' argument centered on an August offer from Mardian's broker to sell the football organization the domain for $3.5 million. The team called this an attempt to unfairly profit from the team's trademark.

However, the panel noted Mardian had previously received an unsolicited offer for $2 million in January 2025 from a Turkish digital agency on behalf of an undisclosed client that already owned several other "Rams" branded domains for its international construction and development business. The panel confirmed the existence of the agency and its clients' businesses, finding the offer plausible.

Given that Mardian "received what (so far as the panel can tell on the papers) was a genuine offer for the disputed domain name," his desire to start a bidding war cannot be characterized as use in bad faith under the policy, the panel wrote.

It concluded that Mardian's actions were consistent with a legitimate business of selling a high-value generic domain name, not an attempt to cybersquat on the LA Ram's trademark.

The Los Angeles Rams LLC was internally represented.

John Berryhill of John Berryhill Esq. represented Mardian.

By Westlaw Today

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