It's in lawyers hands now. Or it will be when filed and served. They will pour through UDRP history, comments here and all. Lawyers have a duty to do their best for clients and they love billable hours. One side will pay them, along with a possible $100K fine and other fees, so it's no game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Protection_Act
As for managing the expiry stream, each day I have to decide which domains to let go to Snapnames after the grace period. This is a very efficient process done through a single screen with some analytics.
On some days, the review involves a lot of names with really no time to research them. It is a quick gut decision of whether or not to let a name to go to the wolves or to warehouse them.
For sure, I had never heard of the Kerry/Ganeden people before acquiring that domain. It was just a short name. We own a bunch of those, and this one looked brandable for variety of concepts.
I do recall that initial thought was that it would be a clever name for a name for a game. ICYMI, there was a lot going on with the Roman empire on our around 30 BC. I am a fan of both history and strategy games.
That said, had the former registrant come back within 1 year, and we still had the domain, they could have placed a retail backorder for $199 and we would have honored it.
Assuming this goes to trial, we'll seek to keep the domain and challenge the validity of their trademark for the specific term "BC30" in
any class, let alone the narrow class in which they were
later granted a mark:
I am still dumbfounded that WIPO found anything other than RDNH. It looks to me like they were relying very much on the bad faith narrative.
The reality is that when I defended, e.g. Gorgonzola.city, I won the case. There was no bad faith here.
The fact is that in cases where I know I have no case, or a weak case, I simply hand over the domain. That is my consistent pattern.
I did not do that here because I thought there were one of 2 outcomes:
1. WIPO would do the right thing.
OR
2. WIPO would seal their own fate.
They did the same thing with IBM20.com. The Chinese client there had bought THOUSANDS of bulk combinations of 3 letters and 2 numbers. The registrant could not be bothered to respond and lost in UDRP.
So, as for BC30.com, I am confident that the facts are fully on my side, and look forward to justice being served, and for a high profile win against corporate sponsored WIPO thuggery.
Fiat justitia ruat caelum