Crackpot UK Domain Name Solicitor Jim Davies Back Again

There is an old Egyptian proverb: "There came into a trademark Tribunal a solicitor who did not know" - in this case - did not know how to file evidence, what dates and deadlines meant, how to file requests to cross-examine people, etc. That solicitor is Jim Davies.

As you read this, be prepared to be shocked. If you think I’m lying or inaccurate, consider this - what are the chances I would write this about a solicitor if I weren’t absolutely sure of what I’m saying? I spent almost a year in the High Court for defamation, and it’s no fun. I wouldn’t risk it unless it was my genuine, honest opinion, backed up by evidence and explanations as to how I have come to the conclusions I have.

You ready? Let’s roll!

As many of you know, for the last two years, I’ve had to deal with a pain in the backside in the form of a solicitor I approached for a quote for some intellectual property work.

I usually can't be bothered to write about it, the last year or so has been weird, but the nonsense from last week deserved its own blog post. It was hilarious, the guy seems to have lost the plot. Before we get to the madness of this week, let's take a trip back to see how he joined the motorway of crackpottedness.

Roll back to early 2023, and I wanted to get a quote for some legal work that needed doing, so I called a Solicitor I knew - Jim Davies. Trouble was, Davies not only misremembered the call, claiming that I offered him a third of the domain name if I won, but he also (without telling me) went on to submit details of that call to Nominet’s DRS, where he attempted to obtain the domain name from me by providing false information. Now, this would have been bad enough on it's own, giving false information to obtain property is dark stuff, but add to that the breach of confidentiality - if the call had actually happened the way he claimed. But since he made it up, does that even count as a breach of confidence? Is this one for the Solicitors Regulation Authority?

The problem for Davies is that when he made those allegation to Nominet, he didn’t know that I recorded my calls. I could easily disprove everything he was saying with the calls and with emails.

There was an agreement, but it happened months later after I had already done all the work, Davies didn’t do the work he said he would, and I later found out the info they used to get into the deal was also false (Although to be fair Davies probably didn’t know what the other guy said at the time about him knowing the person dealing with it). But he did soon after, and that lie made no difference to his path forward. Sort of like knowing truth is but a small speed hump. Most people with self-respect would have left it alone at this point.

It's my opinion that Davies conveniently misremembered the date of that agreement to suggest that when I filed my legal work myself in my own case, I did so with that business agreement in mind - and that it could therefore be considered an Abusive Registration, allowing him to try a DRS through Nominet.

In my opinion, for a number of reasons, what Davies was proposing was so stupid he must have known it was false - he had all the emails with the dates but didn’t check? Yet he checked everything else in those emails? It would have also have suggested that he was going to do the legalwork after the domain name had dropped - ehh!

He submitted paperwork that clearly showed the March date as the start of the agreement, but he thought it was January - bollocks.

But he did have a witness. One of the others involved, Michael Toth, also had the exact same false memory. What are the chances of that? The two people who would benefit from this falsehood both had the exact same delusional experience, independent of each other. Both later said, “We’d misremembered,” of course. Anyone that read those emails could see that the first time an agreement was suggested was months after. In my opinion they both knew.

As I said, they didn’t know at that point that the calls were recorded - oh well. The look on their faces must have been a picture as they realised they got rumbled. Had I not had those recordings, it would have been two words against one.

In the end, Nominet's experts dismissed his DRS at the first hearing, then dismissed his appeal. Not before saying that he filled it with irrelevant details. That is of course the consitent pattern with Davies, fills claims with irrelevant nonsense to try and hide the fact he doesn't have any real evidence.

As for the DRS, that’s almost £4,000 in fees wasted right there by Davies on behalf of the complainant, Quick Credit Ltd.

That can't be £4,000 down the drain because Davies or Toth filed dormant accounts with Companies House for that year! Nothing suspicious here, keep moving – these aren’t the accounts you’re looking for.

I'm genuinely unsure how you pay out £4,000 in expenses, plus a trademark application fee and still try to claim that your company is dormant, it's a miracle.

Anyway, I say filed them – he eventually filed them - late. A one off? Not really, before that, they filed the company statement late and got a strike-off warning. All this is after he decided to title himself "In-House Counsel". For some reason it keeps reminding me of that scene from Only Fools and Horses - "Well we'll call you Lord Rodney"

But apart from that, Davies is well on top of things?

Well, sort of. He once told me not to pay a fee to Nominet because he needed to speak to them first – which he didn’t. He texted me at around 21:30, after the deadline, to say he hadn’t had the chance to speak to them and that I should now pay it. It was due by 18:00, when they close, meaning he almost cost me my company’s DRS.

Luckily, I ignored him and had already paid it early – otherwise, I would have lost.

Hell Yes! Let's start moving this comedy up a level. We are going into the Court/Tribunal process, the Trademark system to be exact, and this is magic. Let's now combine lateness with insanity.

Davies and my company are involved in a trademark battle. My company is objecting, and Davies is representing the other side – his company, Quick Credit Ltd.

Remember, Mr Davies is a self-proclaimed trademark specialist, so I’m really up against it here. He’s going to be on the ball, isn’t he? His own company, his specialist field of law – I’m in trouble!

Well, not exactly. Davies has now had three opportunities to file his evidence correctly and has failed each time. It’s almost parody at this point – it’s embarrassing. I'd jokingly say that I don't think he's been in a Trademark Court before, after seeing what I have over the last year, I don't think he's even been to the toilet in one as he was passing through.

He doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing or why. He seems unaware of the rules, and the IPO case officers are almost acting like his lawyer, walking him through it and telling him what to do. It’s an absolute shambles. The IPO have issued him a warning saying they won't put up with these constant failings, and he still didn't do it right the next time (no header pages or index sheet).

Evidence index pages missing, header sheets on evidence missing, page pagination incorrect or missing, documents missing – not even aware there’s a 300-page limit on evidence, etc.

You’ve read this far, so deep down, you already know the answer to that one.

Having been given a chance to refile because he didn’t know what he was doing, Davies was given a further 3 weeks to correct and resubmit the evidence. He was given until the 21st of October, midnight.

Davies filed a few bits before midnight, claiming the files were too big and that more would follow. One small batch followed. Then nothing. Midnight came and went – he’d given up, tapped out, and most likely off to bed.

Then files started to appear the next day, some at 10:00, others as late as 13:00. This was well after the deadline. It was shambolic and embarrassing – the guy has no standards. If he can’t manage himself and his own proceedings, how can he manage clients? Oh, yep, he can’t, can he? Cast your mind back to me almost losing my own DRS if I would have followed his advice.

Eight weeks later, the Intellectual Property Office wrote back to him and said, “Your evidence still isn’t right – again.” But not only that, you were also late this time – double whammy, well done lad. They gave him another chance to refile, but this time he also had to complete a form explaining why he was late.

3 further weeks rolled on and this time, he filed it within the deadline. He took the full three weeks, but 90 minutes or so before the deadline, it was in. 90 minutes pre-deadline for Davies is a substantial improvement. So shocked was I, I actually thought he was now getting professional help. Now I’m really worried – I must now be facing two solicitors? In the end it turned out he wasn't getting legal help, it was the same old standard of filing we had become used to.

In this court filing about the lateness, he said that the reason for his documents being filed on the 22nd of October instead of the deadline on the 21st was because of a dodgy internet connection. He submitted a screen shot of somekind of communication a month earlier with his broadband company to show they were onto something. OK, so you've been having internet problems for two months, and you still leave filing important Tribunal documents until last minute? What kind of Solicitor does that?

But anyway, this is new – this is not something he had mentioned before. At the time, he mentioned that the files were too large to be sent over email (Gmail).

Most people would have accepted it, but I know Davies, I know his games. If he’s typing, it’s bullshit that’s landing on that screen. Let me right-click on some of these documents and check the metadata to see when these PDF documents were created.

Well, what do you know? Four out of eight of the docs that appeared on the 22nd were created on the morning of the 22nd – one day after the deadline.

How does a dodgy internet connection cause your PDFs to be created a day after the deadline? He wouldn’t have told the court a few porkies, would he?

Well, he has history. Somewhere around 2006, the High Court said he was talking “palpable nonsense” – I think that means bullshit to non-lawyer types like us. Justice Parks made some other comments about him – well worth a read - click on an imeage below.

In one of his documents, Davies demanded a load of nonsense, one was to have a Case Management Conference before my second round of evidence was in. That CMC scheduled for the morning of Friday the 14th of March.

Having had enough of his nonsense and lunacy, I decided to just hire a barrister and let her take it until the end. She’s amazing – exactly what you’d expect when you hire a professional. Two days before, she sent in a skeleton argument for the CMC, laying out the insanity that should be addressed during the CMC.

So rattled by this was Davies, that the evening before the hearing, he went full Whack job - or Crackpot. At just after 17:00, an email came in where Davies had submitted his own skeleton arguments. That's just 2 working hours before the hearing - bit unusal but the case officer did say nobody needed to submit any Skeleton Arguments, so no real issue.

He’s now trying to put in a new witness statement – WTF. Davies thinks he can file more evidence and change his witness statement whenever he likes, rules don't apply to him. He seems to think he can just file non-standard submissions rather than do the job right the first time. Rightfully, the judge told him to take a hike.

He also stated to the court that he wanted to cross-examine me when it comes to the main hearing. My barrister had to explain to him that he didn’t file a request properly in accordance with the rules – Davies not knowing what the rules are or how to file things in court - Oh, I’m shocked, I tell thee. Why is my barrister telling Davies how court works? All the chap had to do was ask ChatGPT.

The IPO court case will continue, and he has another opportunity to get things right – think monkey, typewriter, Shakespeare, and we’re in the right ballpark of where we’re currently at.

Indeed he would.

In his Skeleton Arguments, he went pouring his heart out to the IPO about my businesses, my tax arrangements, my websites, anything he could find. Mad Davies appeared to have had a complete breakdown. I was out having a curry with some domain friends when his unhinged rants came through. Mr Wingate’s company has just been up in the High Court and paid a tax bill – errh? It is true that HMRC took me to the High Court. We had a disagreement over tax, I thought it was voluntary, they didn't - they won. I paid it in full, plus some penalties and all is well in the world.

About 5-6 points he raised – it was just sad to read, desperate.

He must have spent hours of his time filing all of that. My barrister, in the hearing, pointed out to the judge that it was all irrelevant nonsense, and the whole lot was kicked out in a few seconds. Both must have felt sorry for him, a grown man reduced to scraps on the floor.

When Davies DRS'd me through Nominet. He was banging on about why evidence shouldn't be read by Nominet and their experts because it was legally Privileged, it was commercially senstive etc. At one point it felt like he was pleading with Nominet's lead lawyer to kick out what he wrote in emails. He even tried to claim it in the Trademark proceedings early on. One of the points of the CMC was to discuss it.

I asked my Barrister what happened when they spoke about it, oh he didn't raise it!

He didn't raise it?

Nope, If this is true and I believe my Barrister. The coward knew that he wouldn't get away with it in front of my Barrister and the judge. He crawled back into his little hole with his tail between his legs. He's ok giving it the big one to Nominet, but when he's in Court/Tribunal, he shuts his mouth.

A shout out to Nominet there, obviously they made the right call and ignored him when he previously raised it.

The IPO court case will continue, and he has another opportunity to get things right.

I think they have given him 2-3 weeks to refile, but he's been told that he has to get it under 300 pages and has to remove all of the repition in his evidence.

He's been told he needs to file his request for cross examination properly, but I think deep down it's dawning on him, he will be the only one taking the stand to be questioned on anything of substance - rightlfully so, he was the one that applied for it.

All in all he's a fair bit of work to do to get this near to standard. Time will tell if he's capable of doing it.

Maybe the guy doesn’t have the skills or organisational ability to be a decent lawyer, but at least he has the ethics right – nar.

Not only does he have false memories of business deals, when and where they took place, not only does he file that false information with Nominet in an attempt to obtain intellectual property, not only does he file late and make dodgy, questionable excuses – he also had a plan to blackmail domain holders.

On one call I have, Davies comes up with the idea that it would be a good idea to buy the old trademarks from Bona Vacantia for a former payday lender site, then use that trademark to extort money from the new owner who has rebuilt that site over a period of two years, and ask for remuneration in the form of “fees and/or shares in the business.” This wouldn’t have been a victimless endeavour – someone had put a lot of money and hard work into rebuilding it.

I’m so lucky to have saved these call snippets; I actually thought I’d lost them when my computer blew (always keep backups). Without them, I couldn’t have refuted a lot of what he says in his witness statement, now at least I can show them to be false.

Going further he submitted details of my Mrs to a Trademark process, he was supposed to be dealing with an issue for her with Nominet. What on earth my Mrs has to do with him applying for a Trademark is beyond me - but it's another example of his desperation. To me, it read like he was trying to get my Mrs prosecuted. Throw every bit of mud you can find and hope that a bit sticks.

The irony of this is of course I have call recordings of something which could probably do something like that to one of the people involved more distant in this (Not Davies). As much as I was tempted, I never did submit those recordings.

I’m slowly waiting for the court case to finish, then a complaint is going in to the SRA with everything I have. I would have sued him if he would give me his insurance details, but he won’t, and I can’t be sure his financial situation lends itself to cost recovery. The firm of solicitors (Setfords) that he was registered with on the SRA register says he was never able to set up files after failing to complete the onboarding process. Why was he linked to that firm on the SRA register?

We’ve also heard Nominet say he wasn’t able to complete their vetting process to stand as a non-executive director in 2023. Do you see a pattern here?

Be careful both on grounds of confidentiality, accuracy of his recall, and his professional abilities. I have a lot of friends in this business, and I don’t want to see any of them going through what I have with him.

Fortunately, I’ve found a great barrister who is dealing with it all. Now I don’t need to give it any more of my time, but for two years it’s been time I could have been using to focus on other things.

Remember, I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't think he wasn't a risk to others. I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't think it was true.

The domain community is a small one. Stay safe people!