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Ontario Superior Court Rules on Ways to Recover Domain Names
At a motion to strike, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in South Simcoe Railway Heritage Corporation v. Wakeford, 2011 ONSC 2427 (CanLII) recently dealt with whether the plaintiff’s claims for breach of trust, detinue sur trover, wrongful conversion or misappropriation of intellectual property rights in recovering its domain name disclosed a reasonable cause of action.
The plaintiff is a non-profit corporation that operates a historic steam train. At various times, the defendant had either been a volunteer or an officer of the plaintiff. In 1996, the defendant registered the domain name “steamtrain.com” for the plaintiff organization. In 2004, volunteers working on behalf of the plaintiff discovered that the defendant had altered details of the domain name registration. The registration details were again altered in 2005 as to become entirely private.
The motions judge held that since the plaintiff became aware of the tortious claims in 2004, the limitation period expired in 2006. Therefore, commencing the action on March 19th of 2010 meant that the tort claims (detinue sur trover, wrongful conversion and misappropriation of intellectual property rights) were barred by the Limitations Act 2002, S.O. 2002, C.24. In relation to the claim for damages for breach of trust, the motions judge indicated that it was not plain and obvious that the limitation period had expired, or that the claim was otherwise untenable. These were matters of fixed fact and law that required a trial to resolve.
For additional information, visit:
http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2011/2011onsc2427/2011onsc2427.html