Defamation law in England tends to favour claimants, it was even a joke in South Park (Tom Cruise shouting "I'm gonna sue you in England!"). Two elements need to be met for a claim in defamation, it must refer to the claimant, and it must lower the claimant "in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally". My opinion being familiar with the existing case law is that the registration of a .sucks domain could meet these and other defamation requirements. For example, the threshold of what constitutes a defamatory statement is very low, as evidence by the Lord McAlpine case where this tweet was considered defamatory: 'Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *Innocent face*" http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2013/981.html In my opinion, a defamation case has a high possibility of success in England. This is not to say that it will happen, just that at least in the UK it is a distinct possibility. It might be difficult to prove damages though, but it might be possible to obtain injunctive relief. Andres On 28/03/2015 16:55, Nicolas Adam wrote: > I guess there is a difference between successfully bringing up an > action and standing a snowball's chance in hell of winning it on the > strength of that sole registration fact, but I'm kind of hoping that > registering is not the only threshold .... > > > On 2015-03-27 7:26 AM, Andres Guadamuz wrote: >> I had a class today exactly about this. I was joking to the students >> if I should consider buying andresguadamuz.sucks and >> andresguadamuz.porn, and we had an extensive discussion about whether >> the above would be defamatory if someone else did it. Most of the >> class thought that you could successfully bring up an action in >> England for defamation just for registering the domain. >> >> I tend to agree. > -- Dr Andres Guadamuz Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law Room G17 Freeman Centre University of Sussex Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9QE Tel. 01273 678629 http://ssrn.com/author=387238 http://www.technollama.co.uk