Brands which have endlessly expressed their concerns over cybersquatting in the new gTLD’s space and complained about the cost of enforcement of their trademarks in existing TLD’s and ccTLD’s are still missing a huge opportunity to secure dropping trademark infringing domains for nominal fees.
Brands which spent thousands of dollars to bring a single UDRP are failing to take advantage of registering dropping trademark infringing domains which would save them not only a huge amount of money but also the time it takes to get the domain while allowing others to monetize the domains.
Here are just a few examples of some bang on TM domains that dropped in the last couple of weeks and were registered by someone other than the brand holder.
In most of these cases the domain names were not immediately re-registered on the drop but a day or two later, meaning that if the Brand Holders had placed a back order on the domains they most likely would have gotten them for a nominal fee instead of now having to spend thousands of dollar each to get back in a UDRP:
waltdisneybooks.com
fordtruckdealers.com
napaautostores.com
walmartcoupons.com
seattlepostintelligencer.com
fubuclothing.com
ncaabettingodds.com
foxnflsunday.com
forddiscounts.com
saturdaynightlivetickets.com
googleincome.com
nflrecord.com
As you can see from the list these are not typo domain names, but bang on domains spelled correctly and strongly related to the Brand.
There are a few other domains that dropped that are still available to be registered days later.
We are publishing this list just to demonstrate that Brands are not taking advantage of the cheapest method of brand protection which is spending nominal money to obtain the domain in the drop.
We would urge you not to register any of these domains unless you are the trademark holder:
fordconcept.com
nhlreplicajerseys.com
toshibasatellitenotebook.com
microsoftwordtraining.com
bankofamericaautoloans.com
sealymemoryfoammattress.com
harvardphysics.com
myredlobster.com
While brand holders may not want to go through drop lists everyday to find TM domains, there are certainly enough others people going through the lists that they could pay a nominal fee to attempt to acquire the domains.
seattlepostintelligencer.com was a print paper but they went online now with seattlepi dot com
Death of the newspaper!!
seattletimes will be charging viewers to read online…..this March but nobody is going to pay.
what?? now, you’re just one step away of recommending TM holders to pay for cybersquatted domains if they are cheap.
do you think it’s OK to give money to warehousers, cybersquatters and registrars for doing shaddy business? If I was a TM holder I would act the same. i would prefer paying 100 times more on URDP or court action in a select few domains to give the example than to be bullied.
TM holders should not have to pay a dime on “bang on TM domains” not even in reg fee domains if they don’t need them. they cannot secure all combinations of words and trademarks or dream on be on an equal level to a pool of cybersquatters testing all possibilities.
new gTLDs will be just another money sink for TM holders so they are right on being concerned.
Some brands will attempt to go after lesser domains and stay away from the best domains. It doesn’t make sense.
Another good brand domain available to register is DisneyAnimatedFilms.com (880 exact match) and ListOfDisneyAnimatedMovies.com (1,600). Wouldn’t recommend registering these, but the two domains show that a brand creator may wait to pursue legal actions once someone is successful with the domain.
The brand creator probably doesn’t worry about small traffic. Disney owns the best movie domains with their name: DisneyMovies.com and DisneyFilms.com. They also own DisneyAnimation.com, as well. Why worry about small domains when only the best domains matter?
Jose
Did you see this story:
http://www.thedomains.com/2013/02/26/melbourne-it-promises-a-huge-dividend-from-new-gtld-defensive-registrations/
Brands hire companies to do brand protection and they pay a lot of money for it
They also spend a fortune filing UDRP;s at thousands each.
So yes I’m recommending that companies instead of worrying about new gTLD defensive registrations and/or spending thousands in some cases, tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands in legal fees to get back domains in UDRP or federal cases, spend $8 to get the domain instead when they drop
Some of the domains you listed are not protected by simply owning the trademark. The precendent legal case American Needle v. NFL (http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/05/24/american-needle-high-court-delivers-9-0-shutout-against-nfl/) addresses some of your erroneously listed domains. It was a landmark decision against the NFL that addressed the issue of an exclusive monopoly on the sale of related products. Thus, NHLreplicajerseys.com (mentioned in this article) has the same protection extended to it. Moreover, for decades periodicals have reported on stories and betting odds for sports leagues. Consequently, MGM and Ceasar’s Palace are free to publish betting odds. Thus, NCAAbettingodds.com is no more subject to trademark infringement than major corps or traditional newspapers. In fact, this associated reporting / publishing helps to promote the aforementioned sports leagues. These issues and domains are distinctly different than some of the other brands mentioned in the article.
also note:
http://nfltraderumors.co/help-wanted/
and the disclaimer at the bottom of their page:
NFL Trade Rumors has no affiliation with the NFL, the National Football League or NFL.com
I should have emphasized that I think this is a good article that raises a good point. I only intended to note that a few of the listed domains in the sports leagues that consist of multiple independent corporations (teams are independent corps.) are not subject to the the same restrictions regarding trademark infringement. However, I think that Michael raises a very astute point apart from those few anomalous example domains.
I bet dollars to donuts that some of the people out there registering these exact match brand related domains are affiliates of the brand – they can make money by skimming brand type-in and free organic seo traffic and redirecting via affiliate links or via bs review sites.
If typo domain affiliates do it with typo domains of the brand they’ll surely do it with these kinds of domains too, as the EPC’s are so much higher.
If the brands are too late to catch these on the drop, then they should *at least* monitor the redirect and outbound link codes to identify which affiliates are robbing them this way, and save paying out the stolen commissions.