Ottomanelli Brothers hired a web design company.  An employee of the company registered the domain name NYCOTTO.COM in his own names for unknown reasons.  The design company provided DNS servers.  It went out of business and the site went dead.    The employee was nowhere to be found.  No one could re-point the name without the authorization of the missing employee.  So Ottomanelli brought a UDRP in order to get control of its domain name (and re-surrect its site).

Ottomanelli Bros. v. Rob Velez, NAF FA0503000440427 (May 2, 2005).

Practice pointer:  Companies should not allow third parties to be the admin contact for its important domain names.  Many companies use ‘role’ email addresses (domains@xyz.com) for contact addresses so that important communication (such as renewal notices and the like) are not sent to a departed employee’s un-monitored inbox.