Bycer & Marion in the News
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirms ruling in TRX.com cybersquatting case
DomainNameWire.com
April 8, 2025
Appeals court confirms domain owner wasn’t cybersquatting with his purchase of TRX.com.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court’s ruling in a cybersquatting case involving TRX.com.
The lower court had ruled that the owner of TRX.com was not cybersquatting and awarded attorney’s fees as an exceptional case. That ruling will stand.
Loo Tze Ming bought the domain name trx.com for $138,000 in April 2022 at domain marketplace 4.cn.
In October 2022, Fitness Anywhere LLC, a company going through bankruptcy that claimed rights in TRX, filed a cybersquatting claim under UDRP. The following month, the panelist awarded the Complainant the domain name in a controversial decision.
Ming overlooked the dispute notice and didn’t respond, so he sued Fitness Anywhere in Arizona to stay the transfer. That case was stayed because Fitness Anywhere is in bankruptcy.
Then, in February 2023, a company called JFXD TRX ACQ LLC, which described Fitness Anywhere as its predecessor in interest, filed an in rem lawsuit against trx.com in Virginia, where the .com registry is based.
Given the ongoing suit in Arizona, it was odd that JFXD TRX filed an in rem suit against the domain name because it knew who the domain owner was and how to contact him.
Ming successfully petitioned the court to move the in rem case to Arizona, where he filed his original lawsuit.
Moving the case was key because Arizona is in the Ninth Circuit. There’s precedent in the Ninth Circuit that the original registration date of a domain is the relevant date for a case under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA).
Trx.com was registered in 1999. The plaintiff got trademark rights in the second-level domain term TRX sometime after that, and then Ming bought the domain years after the trademark was established. However, according to the Ninth Circuit, because the original registration in 1999 predated the plaintiff’s trademark rights, the plaintiff couldn’t win.
The district judge found many discrepancies in JFXD TRX’s arguments, and found many of the filings unintelligible. (More details about those arguments and filings are here.) She ruled in favor of Ming, and ruled that JFXD TRX should pay about $40,000 in attorney’s fees.
JFXD TRX appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking it to review the lower court’s decision to dismiss the case for failure to state a claim, and to review the award of attorney’s fees
This month, the court affirmed (pdf) the lower court’s opinion. It ruled that only Ninth Circuit precedent applies, so JXFD had to show trademark rights dating to the original 1999 registration of the domain.
The appeals court also affirmed the award for attorney’s fees:
…The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that this case was “exceptional.” … JFXD filed suit in the Virginia district court even though its attorney knew that Ming was already litigating in Arizona. Further, as the Arizona district court explained, “JFXD and its counsel were unable to present intelligible factual or legal arguments, leaving Ming and the [Arizona district court] to guess as to why JFXD believed its cybersquatting claim was viable.” Finally, JFXD ignored court orders, communicated with the court ex parte, and inexplicably shifted its position multiple times throughout the course of litigation. Because the district court properly granted Ming attorneys’ fees below, Appellees are entitled to attorneys’ fees on appeal.
