Legal News

A UDRP was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) against the valuable 2 letter QW.com domain name. The complaint was a bit confusing, pitting the Complainant, Quickware, Inc. / Williams Fred, against Quickware, represented by Fred Williams, as the Respondent.

The sole panelist, Scott Blackmer, ruled in favor of the domain registrant in this UDRP. The decision was published on the WIPO website this morning. Based on my reading of the decision, it appears that someone impersonated the domain registrant in an attempt to wrest control over this high value domain name using the fairly inexpensive UDRP:

In general, I thought UDRP panels have gotten past the issue of pricing as it relates to generic / descriptive one word domain names. A domain registrant who owns a one word .com – or alternative extension – domain name that is descriptive in nature should be able to make their own determination about the pricing based on their own expectations.

I am sure most of you have heard of the sportswear and shoe company called Converse. My daughter has a pair of the canvas Converse Chuck Taylor shoes, as do millions of others around the world. Converse is a well-known brand.

However, converse is also a dictionary term related to being engaged in conversation. With chat technology and chatbots in the news of late due to advancements in artificial intelligence, conversation related keywords are probably worth more now than ever before. In addition, I have been seeing startups and other businesses using non .com domain names quite a bit, and they seem to be selling for more. For instance, Doron Vermaat reported the $52,000 sale of Fire.CO just 3 days ago.

Karen Bernstein is an Intellectual Property lawyer who has considerable domain industry expertise. Karen has been involved in the domain space for quite some time, and she is a regular participant at domain industry events.

According to a LinkedIn post she shared yesterday, Karen has been appointed as a UDRP panelist at the National Arbitration Forum.

A UDRP was filed against the Cabot.com domain name at NAF. There are more than 1,000 companies with Cabot in their branding listed on LinkedIn alone and there are 46,000 people results. That alone should indicate the wide usage of the Cabot term. The Cabot I am most familiar with is a cheese company, and it was not the complainant here.

The complainant in the UDRP is Cabot Brand Co. Ltd. Just looking at that alone, I wouldn’t know which Cabot company is filing the UDRP. The domain registrant did not respond to the UDRP. Despite this, the UDRP was denied.