Attorneys searching for a domain name dispute lawyer often need something adjacent: an expert who can establish, from the registration and DNS record, who controlled a domain name, when control changed, what the domain was used for and what that use was worth, and who can say so in a report and on the stand. DNAccess and Bill Hartzer are not a law firm and do not provide legal advice. What we provide is expert analysis and testimony on domain names, SEO (search engine optimization), online advertising and internet marketing, retained by counsel in litigation, arbitration and UDRP proceedings. This page explains the matters that work applies to, the work product, how the evidence is assembled so that it survives cross-examination, and how to engage.
Who the expert is
Bill Hartzer is the founder of Hartzer Consulting and of DNAccess, with more than 25 years in domain names, search engine marketing and online advertising. He has been retained as an expert witness in matters involving domain name ownership and theft, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media and online reputation, has prepared expert reports and declarations, and has testified at deposition and trial. Through DNAccess he has directed the recovery of hundreds of stolen and lapsed domain names, which means his opinions on how a domain changes hands are grounded in having moved them back. Further background is on our about page.
Matters this work applies to
The common thread is a dispute in which a domain name, or the traffic and revenue attached to it, is the asset at issue and the facts must be reconstructed from technical records nobody kept for litigation. Domain ownership and theft cases turn on who held the registrar account, which credentials were used, when the transfer occurred and whether the registrar followed its own policies and ICANN’s; our domain hijacking hub describes the mechanics we are asked to explain. Cybersquatting and ACPA (Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act) matters require evidence of registration date relative to the mark, the use made of the domain, and the registrant’s pattern across other names. UDRP support and court challenges to UDRP decisions require a clear account of the registration and use history, since a panel decides on the papers and a court reviewing the dispute afresh will want the underlying record; our guide to domain name disputes sets out the procedural options. Business-partner, founder and web-developer disputes often reduce to whose name was on the registration, who paid for it and who controlled the DNS, and the answer is frequently not the one the parties remember.
Valuation context arises when damages are claimed or a domain is divided in a dissolution or an estate, and it requires evidence of comparable sales, traffic and revenue rather than assertion. Trademark conflicts involving domains require analysis of the confusion a domain creates in search results and in advertising. Website attribution, the question of who operated a site at a given time, relies on archived content, analytics, advertising accounts and hosting records. Registrar practice questions, including whether a registrar’s handling of a transfer, expiration or account recovery met the applicable policy, require familiarity with ICANN’s Transfer Policy, the Expired Registration Recovery Policy and the registrar’s own published terms. Underlying all of these is historical WHOIS and DNS evidence, and counsel should know that the public record has thinned considerably: Interisle found in data collected from late 2023 to early 2024 that only 10.8% of gTLD domains had identifying contact data for the actual registrant available through the public lookup service, according to its gTLD Registration Contact Data Study. The record exists, but assembling it is now expert work.
The governing cases
Two Ninth Circuit decisions frame most of the domain disputes we support, and counsel will recognize both. In Kremen v. Network Solutions, Inc., 337 F.3d 1024 (9th Cir. 2003), the court held that a registrant has an intangible property right in a domain name, applying a three-part test under which the interest must be capable of precise definition, capable of exclusive possession or control, and subject to a legitimate claim to exclusivity, and it held that a domain name can therefore be the subject of a conversion claim. The underlying judgment against the person who stole sex.com was $65 million, $40 million compensatory and $25 million punitive, according to the court’s certification order in Kremen v. Cohen. Kremen is why a stolen domain is pleaded as theft of property rather than a contract dispute with the registrar, and why the forensic timeline of who possessed the name, and when, is the center of the case.
In DSPT International, Inc. v. Nahum (9th Cir. 2010), the court affirmed a $152,000 jury verdict against a former employee who had registered his employer’s domain in his own name and withheld it to extract disputed commissions, holding that a person is liable under the ACPA if he subsequently uses the domain name with a bad faith intent to profit from the protected mark by holding the domain name for ransom. The award included roughly $31,572 spent rebuilding the website. DSPT is the case for every business-partner, employee and developer dispute in which the domain was registered legitimately and later held hostage, and it is the reason the registration record, the mark and the demand correspondence must be laid out together.
The work product
A forensic registration and DNS timeline reconstructs, from archived records, every change in the domain’s registrant, registrar, nameservers, status codes and expiration date over the relevant period, with each entry tied to its source. Archived-content exhibits establish what a website displayed on a given date, which is the evidence of use, of commercial activity and of attribution that cybersquatting and trademark claims depend on. Declarations support motions, including applications for temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions where a domain is about to be transferred or deleted. Expert reports set out the methodology, the evidence and the opinions in the form the applicable rules require. Deposition and trial testimony explains the technical record to the finder of fact in plain English, and rebuttal reports address opposing experts’ opinions where the methodology or the record does not support them.
How the evidence is assembled
The value of an expert in a domain dispute lies in the evidence, and the evidence must be assembled so that it withstands challenge. We draw on commercial WHOIS (the historical registration record for a domain name) archives that captured registration data before privacy redaction and before the public WHOIS service was retired, which is often the only source that identifies a registrant by name at a given date; our guide to WHOIS history explains what those archives hold. Passive DNS, the historical record of which nameservers and IP addresses a domain resolved to, establishes where a site was hosted and when that changed, independent of what either party says. Web archives establish content and use. Registrar records obtained through subpoena establish account ownership, login activity, authorization codes and transfer approvals that no public source holds, and a subpoena is more productive when the expert has drafted it to ask for the specific fields the registrar keeps. UDRP decisions and court records establish a registrant’s pattern across other domains, which bears directly on bad faith.
Each source has known limits, and the report says what they are. Archive captures are point-in-time, so the absence of a capture is not evidence of absence. Registrant data can be proxied or false, so a name on a record is a lead to be corroborated rather than a conclusion. A timeline that mixes sources without saying which is which, or presents a reconstruction as certainty, is the first thing a competent opposing expert attacks. Our reports are built so that every entry can be traced to a document that can be produced, and every opinion is stated with the confidence the record supports and no more.
How to engage
Engagement begins with a conflict check, for which we need the names of the parties, counsel and the domain names at issue. We then agree on a scope with counsel: the questions to be answered, the deliverables, the deadlines in the scheduling order and whether testimony is anticipated. Retention is through counsel under an engagement letter, and work product is prepared at counsel’s direction. We do not quote fees on this page because the scope of a forensic reconstruction varies with the number of domains, the period and the records available; contact us and we will discuss the matter and provide terms. Parties who have lost a domain and have not yet retained counsel may find our guides to legal options for domain theft victims and to the UDRP useful in deciding what kind of help they need.
What DNAccess does
DNAccess provides expert witness and litigation support on domain name matters, alongside stolen domain name recovery and domain name background checks, which produce the same forensic registration and DNS history that litigation requires. Counsel with a pending or anticipated matter involving a domain name, a website or online advertising should contact us for a conflict check and an initial discussion of scope.