Elliott Salmons of Toronto registered the names technodome.com and destinationtechnodome.com with Network Solutions. Salmons set up his site at Technodome.com as a “theatre technicians’ resumé page.”
A company called Heathmount AE Corp., owned by one of Canada’s most powerful property dealing families, the Reichmanns, took legal action because it owns registered trade marks for the word "Technodome," the name of a pleasure dome development in Montreal that will open in 2004.
Heathmount wanted to use US anti-cybersquatting legislation that allows it to sue domain names, rather than their registered owner. Accordingly, Salmons only learned of the case when he read about the court’s first order in the press.
Salmons’ lawyer, acting for the domain names, asked that the case be dismissed and heard in Canada because he argued it was a more appropriate forum. However, the Virginia court took the view that Canada lacked suitable laws to deal with the case.
The Virgina court said: “a Canadian court would be less familiar with the provisions of the [US anti-cybersquatting legislation] than this court.” It added that if the case was decided in Canada, a judgment could be difficult to enforce in the US and dismissed the argument that Mr Salmons could not afford to fight the case in Virginia, saying he had not shown “it will literally be financially impossible to litigate in this district.”