eBay.com Is Allowing & Profiting From The Sale Of Trademark Infringing Domains
eBay.com has been active in defending its trademark filing and winning at least 3 UDRP in just the past year including on the domains:
ebaycatwalk.com; ebayip.com and ebayofip.com; watch-ebay.com;
While spending fees and costs to go after trademark infringing domains, its allowing domains that infringe on its own trademark to be sold on its own site.
eBay.Hu.com is proudly listed for sale right on ebay.com for the bargain “buy it now” price of $628,000. (.hu is the ccTLD for Hungary)
Also for sale on eBay.com currently are:
eBayGuidelines.com for the “Buy it Now” price of $5,000
eBaySavings.com also for the “Buy it Now” price of $5,000
eBayMotorSales.com for just $49.95
DealsofeBay.com, for just $.99
Sure eBay has every right to file UDRP’s against domains that clearly violate its trademark, but how about policing their own site?
How can eBay possibly allow these domains to be sold on their own auction platform?
Moreover, why isn’t eBay held responsible for facilitating the sale of trademark domains?
Doing a quick check on eBay, I found a ton of clear trademark infringing domains including:
VerizonWirelessSales.com on sale for $10 Million Dollars
VERIZONWIRELESSBLACKBERRYSTORM.COM a nice domain which infringes on the trademarks of 2 companies, with an asking price of $1 Million Dollars.
Microsoft infrgining domains, sure ebay.com got them too:
PoweredbyWindows.com, advertised by the owner as being “a windows Microsoft Domain” and offered for $75K.
Bing4u.com and several others are advertised as being “the new search engine of Microsoft”.
I literally could go on for days giving examples of other infringing domains offered for sale on ebay.com
I believe eBay.com gets paid a percentage of the sales price, so if any of those domains sold, ebay.com would profit from the sale of trademarked domains.
Why is eBay.com permitted to make a commission on the sale of trademark infringing domains?
How much money does eBay.com make a year just from listing fees for trademarked domains?
Now, what about those thousands of Michael Jackson domains that eBay is allowing to be sold.
This is a huge problem
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other than the stupidity of allowing their own tm domains to be sold on the site, this is no different than namejet, tdnam, snapnames selling the hundreds of tm names every week.
Adam
I think it is different than the other services, in that the sellers on ebay.com advertise the domains as being infringing domains.
It’s one thing to have a domain listed in a drop list with thousands of others and quite the other to accept an ad from someone, advertising the sale of such a domain
eBay.Hu.com is not registered as yet:
Domain Name: ebay.hu.com
Registrar: H292913 (Domain Administrator, Network Solutions LLC)
Whois server: whois.grs.centralnic.com
Record created on: 29 May 2009
Record expires on: 29 May 2010
Status: Live, Registration In Progress
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.TOPONEMASTERHOSTING.COM
NS2.TOPONEMASTERHOSTING.COM
Anon
Looks like it is registered but the process is slow.
(Registration In Progress)
In any event ebay has no business listing such a domain for sale
Yes, this is a big problem on eBay…here’s an example of an auction for the name MichealJacksonTheLegend.com that someone just purchased today on Bay (it is highly likely that it will end up being a non-paying bidder) for $2,000,000.00!
http://tinyurl.com/lhp53f
What is even worse is that it looks like sedo.com/or greatdomains.com is auctioning off toyotahybrid.com. So you have a company that does nothing but deals with domain names and they are auctioning off trademark names. see this link. I think this is horrible because this is an auction that has been cleared on the feautured auctions. Sorry to break the news but someone should.
http://greatdomains.com/auction/auction_detail.php?language=us&auction_id=57749&tracked=&partnerid=32392&language=us
some weak reporting..
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/06/28/levs.jackson.websites.cnn
Say ebay.hu sells for 628,000. Ebay pockets the commision. Then they send a simple C&D to the person who bought it. If the person complies, you have the sales commission, plus the domain name. Most of the time a C&D will be successful. In case the C&D fails, go for undrp. This is when ebay might end up with some financial loss. Still its better for them to try
First of all eBay is not that “smart”
Second, how about if eBay, sells the verizon trademark domain for $10 Million, they collect the commission on the sale and someone has just sold and bought a trademarked domain on their platform
Rakesh
Just because a person has died, it doesn’t mean its open season on their name and image.
Plenty of suits will be brought by the estate.
Generic domains like remembermichael.com are many that contain his full name are subject to UDRP’s just like the living.
Mike, I completely agree. I was just disappointed that CNN gave a very bad image to domainers who supposedly tried to get rich on MJ’s name. The reporter made it sound like domainers were earning millions of dollars on ebay from a tragedy. A third grader could have come up with a better researched news report!
Ok
I miss understood your comment.
I agree with you.
I have a collection of My[FamousPerson].com domains (including MyMichaelJackson.com) and a few years ago asked a well-known domain lawyer if he thought those domains could be used for for-profit websites if it was clearly and conspicuously posted that the sites were not affiliated with those people. He said that he didn’t think there would be a problem. In the meantime, since I haven’t had time to build those sites, I’ve had the domains going nowhere (no parking page) and have received no complaints.
Jon
My point is registering michaeljackson domains and immediately placing them for sale on ebay with an asking price of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars is a problem.
Ask you attorney what his opinion would be if you placed your domains prominently for sale on ebay.com
Millions? I would want BILLIONS for those domains