Stick to your guns
I hope he doesn't settle out of court and that it establishes case law in a "proper" legal system.
When Michael Ross registered the domain playboy.london in August, it was supposed to be a bit of a laugh. The Brit once dated a Playboy Bunny, visited the mansion in Beverly Hills, and has a "colorful past" as they say on Fleet Street. Ross, today a settled-down 50-year-old property developer, was featured in the Daily Mail a …
They only created them so they could extract a bunch more money out of businesses for defensive registrations. Apple worried someone might register apple.london or apple.mobile or apple.someotheruselesstld? Better register those defensively! Basically creating new revenue streams for domains as tens of thousands of companies register millions of domains to prevent potential confusion.
It'll be even worse if companies actually USE these domains, because if Google and Facebook started using google.london and facebook.london for some stuff, people are likely to believe that microsoft.london or ebay.london are real domains associated with those companies, so even those who decide not to play the silly defensive registration game will be forced to become involved to avoid scammers taking advantage of people in their name.
"It'll be even worse if companies actually USE these domains"
Ah, no, because if merely registering the name is evidence of malicious intent, then making it possible to register the domain must be even worse. Expect to see ICANN in court soon for conspiracy to bring down all intellectual property rights everywhere.
Or maybe this guy is a secret ICANN agent......
If playboy win this then there is no need for apple to run around paying to register apple.crapgadget or apple.bumfuckidaho because if anyone else ever does register it then the court will hand it to Apple.
But if he wins then Apple etc have to run out and pre-register everything they can think of now.