Dutch is having a good December. Not only did he win one of the preliminary events at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio – the $2K NLHE event – but he found out this morning that he won his case against PokerHost.com.
The battle with PokerHost ensued in October when he received notice from an attorney that there was a UDRP complaint against him for holding the PokerHost.net domain. Dutch then turned the PokerHost.net site into one about the case and stood his ground on the issue, since he had tried to negotiate with them for quite some time before the complaint to no avail. But this morning, he received notice that the World Intellectual Property Organization decided the case for him, as he documented on his blog:
The Pokerhost.net WIPO decision came today. Not only did I win, but the WIPO panelist found in favor of my reverse domain name hijacking claim, which hardly ever happens. Unfortunately, the UDRP doesn’t actually give any punitive relief to respondents who win on this claim, but it’s nice to get anyway. It definitely put me in a better mood and was a nice thing to wake up to.
In other Dutch news, as it relates to his purchase of Steve Hall’s Pokerfolio domain, the misunderstanding has been settled. According to the text message from Dutch today:
“Just FYI, I did end up giving Steve Hall back Pokerfolio.com for free… Wish him the best.”
Ahhh, the holiday season!
Back in October, Dan blogged about Dutch Boyd purchasing Steve Hall’s domain (www.pokerfolio.com) that had expired while Hall took a hiatus after the WSOP, relegating him to a new domain with much smaller traffic. I commented that Dutch Boyd on NWP Radio, when questioned about the “takeover”, that he would give the domain back to Hall for the price he paid for it ($60).
Fast forward to earlier today, when Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler posted on 2+2 that Hall still has not gotten his domain name back from Boyd. So is Dutch Boyd playing hardball, or is he so wrapped up in his battle with Pokerhost that he’s forgotten all about the photographer and his humble web home? A poker community is watching…
Here’s the clip from the Neverwin guys talking with Dutch about the domain:
[audio:steve hall v dutch boyd.mp3]
“Idiot thieves” he calls them. It seems that Dutch Boyd might be peeved.
The gist of the story, as I understand it, is that Dutch purchased PokerHost.net in 2004 when he considered developing it. When someone from PokerHost.com approached him this summer at the WSOP, he said that he would consider selling it and tried to correspond in the coming months about working out a deal. However, he got no response until he recently received a UDRP complaint from an attorney hired by PokerHost.com. (Did PokerHost.com not realize that Dutch is an attorney himself? Not the brightest move…)
Dutch has now turned PokerHost.net into a website about the case. Not only that, but he’s questioning the business practices of PokerHost.com:
Honestly this situation makes me so mad and I think it indicates what kind of outfit these guys are running at PokerHost.com. Doing a google search of “Poker Host ripoff” or “Poker Host fraud” reveals a long list of questionable business practices and outraged former users of the site. Every review I’ve seen of them is negative. And this demonstrates that they aren’t above stealing from poker players. With all the shit that’s been going on with Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, and all the sites which have gone down with player deposits (yes I know… pot and kettle), I would be very weary of trusting this site.
Obviously, Dutch realizes who he’s preaching to and who’s in that choir. But it also seems that he may have a good case against these folks.
