Opinion ID: 783938
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Laches and contractual limitations of actions

Text: 99 The district court sanctioned Cello because it believed that there was no good faith basis for the answer's assertion of an affirmative defense based on laches and contractual limitations of actions. See Storey, 182 F.Supp.2d at 367-68. As discussed above, the sparsity of cases interpreting the UDRP at the time Cello filed its answer makes it difficult to label the simple reservation of an affirmative defense as frivolous. 100 Additionally, the district court may have misunderstood the complexity of Cello's argument. The district court characterizes Cello's laches argument as unreasonable because documentation from NSI clearly shows that the UDRP Paragraph 4(k) deadline was January 11, 2001, and Storey filed the Instant Action before the deadline on January 10, 2001. Cello's argument, however, was not just that Storey failed to file in time but that Storey failed to do so in a proper forum. The argument that failing to comply with the UDRP Paragraph 4(k) process affected Storey's rights in the Instant Action is weak but it is not objectively unreasonable, again, especially given the lack of judicial interpretation of the UDRP.