Last October, Slipknot filed a lawsuit against Slipknot.com and its owner. Now, after getting pushback from the domain registrant, the band has filed a notice of voluntary dismissal.
The domain was registered in 2001 by an anonymous party whose name has been "Redacted for Privacy," per the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The band alleged that, for nearly 24 years, the website had been cybersquatting and using the domain to profit off the band's name. Included in the band's case was evidence of pay-per-click landing pages on the slipknot.com domain with ads for "concert tickets," "Slipknot merchandise," and "concert vip packages." The suit also claims that the site has been selling counterfeit Slipknot merchandise.
Slipknot's suit was filed in rem — meaning it targeted the domain itself, not the registrant — along with an in personam action against the registrants for "action for trademark
infringement, unfair competition, and common law trademark infringement and unfair competition." According to Domain Name Wire, oftentimes domain owners don't show up to defend in rem cases, but in this case Slipknot Online Services, Ltd. sent their lawyers to court to put up a fight.
Slipknot Online Services, the company that owns the domain, filed to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that the band waited too long to serve the lawsuit. Slipknot filed a voluntary dismissal notice the following day. The dismissal was filed without prejudice, which means Slipknot can relitigate the matter in the future.
It's unclear why Slipknot were pursuing this matter after all these years, but it seems possible that, at least initially, the domain registrants were not trying to impersonate the band. Aside from "slipknot" being a dictionary word, SlipKnot was a mid-‘90s Windows-based web browser. The claims brought forth by Slipknot were under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999.
