The Worldwide Jurisdiction Risk That Domain Investors and Brokers Face with Michael Gargiulo

I bet you didn’t know domain registrars have a legal right to lock your domain name or domain portfolio based on a frivolous lawsuit or baseless claim or did you?

Now that I have your attention, today’s podcast dives deep into the details and back story of how one of the most prolific domain investors of our time discovered his multi-million domain portfolio of ultra-premium domains on lockdown by a bad actor filing a lawsuit in India and reporting it to GoDaddy.

GoDaddy, and they’re not the only domain registrar, has long held and enforced the policy that domains can and will be locked when legally challenged.

And what does legally challenged consist of? Well, I’m glad you asked.

It could simply mean that I or anyone else could sue you for any reason under the sun in conjunction with the domains you own.

And because seeing is considering legally challenging by GoDaddy, then your domains are locked.

No DNS management. No transfers. No account pushing domains from the same registrar. No contact information. No parking. No fielding inquiries. Simply locked, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

And you better hope that the given domain that’s locked has auto-renew turned on or else you risk losing your gem of a domain forever due to a nonrenewal and someone else purchasing it in expired domain auctions.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Tune in as Michael Gargiulo — CEO of VPN.com, long-time domain investor and entrepreneur, and previous podcast guest, and I speak about the case of GoDaddy locking Brent Oxley’s multi-million dollar portfolio of ultra-premium domains.

Michael shares actionable insight, including top intellectual property and domain name lawyers, towards reducing and eliminating the risk of litigation lockups of domain portfolios, including which domain registrars are domain-investor and domain-broker friendly.

And last but not least, we discuss the future, the credibility hit, and monetary losses, that both domain owners and domains of such frivolous lawsuits or claims face.

So hit play, and learn how to safeguard your domain portfolio from frivolous lawsuits, baseless claims, and domain anarchy. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Per Domain Name Wire on March 17, 2021, Godaddy will no longer indiscriminately lock domains when they are subject to a legal challenge.