I was looking through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) UDRP filings, and I saw that Bloomberg Finance, L.P. has filed a UDRP on the Bloomberg.News domain name. The UDRP is WIPO Case D2015-1378.
According to Whois information, the Bloomberg.News domain name is registered to someone with a Beijing address, and it was created on July 14, 2015. Interestingly, on the same day Bloomberg.News was registered, Bloomberg dealt with a fake Twitter corporate report that appeared on Bloomberg.Market, another gTLD domain name. Perhaps the registrant of Bloomberg.News was inspired by the Bloomberg.Market news.
I don’t think Bloomberg will have any trouble winning the UDRP, and I do think it was wise to preemptively try to capture this domain name before it could possibly be used in a nefarious manner. I think a domain name like Bloomberg.News could potentially be more confusing than another extension that has nothing to do with news or finance.
It will be interesting to see if Bloomberg is going to start going after Bloomberg new gTLD domain names prior to them being registered by third parties. For instance, it looks like Bloomberg Finance was able to buy Bloomberg.tech, as .tech just became available. This action would likely save money (vs. the legal/UDRP route), but there are endless possibilities for domain name registrations, and problems are not just limited to the new gTLD domain names.
That said, there are quite a few new gTLD domain names that have “Bloomberg” in them that are registered by third parties. It will be interesting to see how the company deals with these domain names in the future. My guess is they will aggressively enforce their marks to prevent a recurrence of the Bloomberg.Market situation. Hopefully, third parties have enough common sense to not register domain names related to trademark holders like Bloomberg without permission or a valid reason.
