Sallen v. Corinthians Licenciamentos

Citation: Sallen v. Corinthians Licenciamentos LTDA, 273 F.3d 14 (1st Cir. 2001).

Factual Background
A Brazilian company named Corinthians Licenciamentos may be able to use the corinthian.com domain name some day. But before it can, it will have to defeat, again, a claim to that domain being made by a Massachusetts resident named Jay D. Sallen.

Sallen was actually the first to register the corinthian.com domain name. But the Brazilian company won the right to the name in a WIPO proceeding under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy. The company is the intellectual property licensee of the popular Brazilian soccer team Corinthiao, whose name is the Portuguese language equivalent of "Corinthians." The WIPO panel found Sallen to be a cybersquatter, and ordered the corinthian.com domain name transferred to the Brazilian company.

Sallen filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston seeking an order retransferring the corinthian.com name to him. Sallen was not successful, at first. District Judge William Young dismissed Sallen's lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction.

Appellate Court Decision
In a decision by Judge Sandra Lynch, the appellate court noted that one sub-section of the

Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act specifically grants domain name registrants who lose domain names in UDRP proceedings "an affirmative cause of action" in federal courts for the return of "wrongfully transferred domain names." This was exactly the kind of case Sallen filed, and therefore Judge Lynch reversed the dismissal of his lawsuit and remanded it to the District Court.