Green Bay Packers File UDRP Against TitleTown.com (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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6

Green Bay, Wisconsin is known as “Titletown” or “Titletown USA” because of the Green Bay Packers. Now it appears that the National Football League team wants the TitleTown.com domain name. The NFL team filed a UDRP at the World Intellectual Property Organization, and it is WIPO Case D2017-1685.

TitleTown.com is a domain name registered to a company called Headquarters.com, Inc. The domain name was created in January of 1996 (over 20 years ago). According to DomainTools’ Whois History tool, the current registrant has owned the TitleTown.com domain name for many years. The earliest entry in DomainTools is from 2005, and the domain name was owned by Headquarters.com at that time. I looked at Archive.org, and the earliest entry is from 1998. At that time, it also appears that Headquarters.com owned TitleTown.com based on the archived landing page.

At the present time, TitleTown.com does not resolve for me. I am not sure when the domain name resolved to a website, although the Archive.org page shows many entries over the years.

It looks like the Green Bay Packers have filed a variety of trademarks for

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.Org TM – Not Related to Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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1

Nat Cohen noticed an interesting trademark when looking at a cutlery tray organizer his wife bought. As you can see in the top left hand corner of the packaging, there is a TM symbol next to the .ORG logo.

I did a search on Trademarkia.com, and it looks like the trademark was registered earlier this month (on August 8). I am not all that knowledgable about trademarks, but I think this company’s mark is related more to the design than .org. Since the company’s url is

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Playboy Files UDRP Against Playboy.Club (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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0

Playboy, the popular adult entertainment publisher, has filed a UDRP against the Playboy.Club domain name. The UDRP was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and it is case #D2017-1633.

The domain name has a creation date of February of 2017, and it is owned by a registrant in China. At the present time, the domain name does not appear to be used for a website. It looks like Playboy.Club had been previously registered in December of 2014 by a registrant in Cambodia. The domain name expired and deleted, and then it was re-registered in February of this year.

This UDRP decision could be interesting because the term “playboy” is also considered a generic term. Every standard dictionary seems to have a definition for “playboy” aside from the Playboy brand, founded by Hugh Hefner. Dictionary.com, for instance, defines the playboy term as

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Starr.com: 1991 Registration, Subject of UDRP (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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2


A UDRP was filed at the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) against the Starr.com domain name. The  filing can be seen at UDRPSearch.com, and it is case #1743189.

Starr.com has been registered for over 25 years. It was created in November of 1991, and it has not expired since that time. I don’t regularly see domain names this old, let alone seeing a UDRP filed against a domain name that has existed for so long.

Starr.com has had Whois privacy on it for over ten years. Because of the UDRP filing, I was able to see the name of the current domain registrant. Using the Whois History Tool at DomainTools, I was able to see that the registrant has been the same since at least December of 2004. I am not sure if the current registrant is connected to the former owner from pre-2004.

If you visit Starr.com right now, you can see what appears to be a default Network Solutions landing page with PPC links. Beyond my recognition of the landing page design, the “Worldnic” nameservers would seem to indicate that this is a Network Solutions registrar landing page rather than something controlled by the domain owner.

Because the UDRP was filed at NAF, the complainant is unknown at this time. There are so many Google search results for “Starr” that I can’t even take a guess about who filed the UDRP. Starr is a

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Ebay Allegedly Bullying NatureBay

Elliot Silver
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9

According to a report on Fox 13 (the Tampa, Florida Fox affiliate station), Ebay is allegedly bullying a website called NatureBay. It would appear Ebay has an issue with the “Ebay” that is found in the NatureBay branding. The NatureBay.com domain name registration dates back to July of 2009, according to a DomainTools Whois search.

Here’s an excerpt from the news article covering what Ebay told the owner of the business in what is likely a cease and desist letter:

“When Ebay found out about Naturebay, it fired off a letter to Lewis.

Essentially, Ebay says Naturebay is too close to the Ebay name.

In part, the letter reads: “Regardless of your intent, your use and registration of Naturebay for online directory or market place services will dilute the distinctiveness of Ebay and cause consumers to mistakenly believe that your online directory and business is somehow affiliated with Ebay.””

I find it difficult to believe that the company would really think that NatureBay could confuse visitors into think the website is somehow affiliated with Ebay. Not only is the “eBay” in the domain name and business name

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UDRP Filed Against Weeds.com, Weeds.net, and Weeds.org (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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11

A UDRP has been filed against Weeds.com, Weeds.net, and Weeds.org at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The UDRP is WIPO Case D2017-1517.

Interestingly, these three domain names appear to be owned by three different domain registrants. Weeds.com and Weeds.org are registered under privacy proxy, but a Whois history search at DomainTools shows that these domain names were owned by separate entities prior to the Whois record being made private, and I don’t see anything to indicate that they were sold.Weeds.net has a public Whois record that shows it is owned by Name Administration (Frank Schilling’s company). Weeds.com was registered in 1998, Weeds.net was registered in 1999, and Weeds.org was registered in 2002.

All three of these domain names are parked at Uniregistry. As one might expect based on the “weeds” keyword, these three domain names have pay per click advertising with weed and lawn care related keywords. These three domain names have some form of “for sale” notice at the top of the landing page. I would be curious if the complainant tried to buy these valuable domain names before filing the UDRP.

The complainant in this UDRP is listed as Weeds, Inc. A Google search shows a company with that name uses

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