Quite a few UDRP rulings out this morning in favor of large public companies and some huge brands.
The better question to ask is how did these domain not get registered by the companies in the first place and how secondly what took the companies so long to go after them
Texaco won its UDRP on the bang on domain Texaco.net.
Texaco.net has a most recent original registration date of 2008 but according to domaintools.com has an original registration date of 1997
Google won its UDRP for GoogleMap.com which is of course the singular for one of the most used products on earth.
According to the UDRP panel:
“Complainant has used its GOOGLE MAPS mark since 2005, and has used the mark in conjunction with satellite, traffic, and topographical information.
Respondent registered the disputed domain name on or about May 21, 2007”.
How can that be?
How can one of the largest company on earth not register the domain name of its own product for $10 using the singular version?
And why did it take Google almost 6 years to go after the domain?
According to Compete the domain name GoogleMap.com gets around 100,000 unique visitors a month.
That means the domain name over the 5 plus year period may have gotten over 5 million visitors maked the owner of the domain a small fortune by parking it.
The owner didn’t even respond to the UDRP.
Discover Credit Cards won its UDRP and got control of discoverycreditcard.org a domain just registered by the domain holder a year ago, on February 14, 2012 however according to domaintools.com this is a domain that has been registered floating around since 2004.
ShutterFly.com won its UDRP on the common typo Shuttterfly.com (three t’s),. According to Compete this domain got somewhere around 12,000 visitors a year. The Typo has an original registration date of 2006.
Menards a 270 store chain won its UDRP for Menards.co.
The domain name Menards.co was registered in July 2010.
Ashley Furniture won a few UDRP today all on very common typo’s:
ashleyfurntiure.com (transposed “i” and “u”) a domain registered since 2005.
ashlyfurnitur.com (missing the “e” on the end) a domain registered since 2005.
All of the domain names at issue went to a parked page.
All of these cases where bang on TM infringing cases in which most domain holders didn’t even file a response.
Most of these domain have existed in the years that the Trademark lobby has been at every ICANN meeting asking for more and more rules to protect them against sqautting in the new gTLD space which has a very small likehood of every becoming a meaningful amount of domains and a very long time before becoming a meaningful amount certain traffic
Lets just say it
A lot of the cybersquatting problem has been caused by the trademark holders having a poor defensive registration strategy combined with very slow enforcement methods.
To allow a bang on TM domains to exist in one of the three major extension for years before enforcement is incomprehensible.
I see the pro-domaining community has nothing to say here.
“A lot of the cybersquatting problem has been caused by the trademark holders having a poor defensive registration strategy combined with very slow enforcement methods.
To allow a bang on TM domains to exist in one of the three major extension for years before enforcement is incomprehensible.”
It can’t possibly be anyone else’s responsibility. Clearly Google should have googlemap, googlmap, googlemapp, goooglemap, goglemaps… heard of the infinite monkey theorem? Well there aren’t infinite monkeys but there are billions of stupid people online.
You know girls shouldn’t wear short skirts.
People should walk around with lots of cash in hand.
People should be openly gay.
People shouldn’t look too muslim.
Companies shouldn’t leave unregistered names.
Coz you know, that’s just asking for trouble.