The seller tried to raise the price tenfold, and Pay.com.au won back PayRewards.com after the lawsuit

Another legal storm caused by raising the price on the spot appeared in the domain name trading market. This time, the focus of the dispute was PayRewards.com, and the outcome was not ideal for the seller who tried to go back on his word.

In April this year, Australian financial technology company Pay.com.au Limited filed a lawsuit in the District Court of Denver County, Colorado, USA, accusing Dean Adams, the registrant of the domain name PayRewards.com, of unilaterally tearing up the agreement and trying to raise the original selling price from US$38,000 to US$380,000. After the legal proceedings were initiated, the domain name was eventually transferred to Pay.com.au.

According to documents filed in court, Dean Adams initially initiated the transaction through Escrow.com, offering a price of $38,000. Pay.com.au subsequently accepted the offer and completed the payment. However, during the transaction, Adams realized that the buyer was Pay.com.au, which had just completed $15 million in financing and was valued at $303 million, and suddenly proposed to renegotiate and asked to increase the price to $380,000. More extreme, Adams also claimed that if the buyer did not agree, the price of the domain name would increase by 5% every week, and threatened to sell it to other bidders.

Pay.com.au then sought legal protection. On April 22, the local court issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the transfer or deletion of the domain name. Adams did not attend the hearing and did not object to the ban. The domain name registration platform NameBright and its privacy protection service were also mentioned in the lawsuit, but the two parties did not defend the court order.

Pay.com.au already owns payrewards.com.au, and acquiring .com is obviously in line with its brand expansion and market strategy.

Ultimately, as the lawsuit progressed, Dean Adams failed to uphold his price increase demands, and the domain name PayRewards.com was successfully transferred to Pay.com.au.

Information source: domainnamewire