Long domain name battle has a happy ending.

  Chicago restaurant guru David M. Lissner of Dining Chicago used ChicagoRestaurant.com for ten years. Then one day in 2009 – poof! – it was gone. It was suddenly registered to someone in Turkey.

  Lissner’s technical service provider (i.e. web designer/hosting firm) was listed as the administrative contact for the domain name. The company disappeared and the email address it used for the administrative contact expired. That allowed the thief to register the corresponding email address domain name and transfer the ChicagoRestaurant.com domain name away.

  Lissner filed a UDRP last year but lost. The panel noted that it would be very hard to get trademark rights to “Chicago Restaurant”.

So in August Lissner filed an in rem case against the domain name. He got a default judgment and the judge ordered the domain name transferred back to Lissner.

It now forwards to his DiningChicago.com web site.