Legal News

I did a double take this afternoon when looking at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s website. A UDRP was filed against Hug.com and Hug.net. The case is WIPO Case D2016-1620.

As far as I am concerned, Hug.com and Hug.net are about as descriptive as you can get. Both domain names appear to be owned by the same owner, a registrant based in California, according to the Whois information. If you visit the domain names, you will see the domain names have a for sale form on them. Selling descriptive domain names is a perfectly legitimate business model. Hug.com was created in 1995 and Hug.net was created in 1999.

According to DomainIQ, Hug.com has a

A UDRP has been filed against the valuable three letter EDP.com domain name. The case was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization, and it is WIPO case D2016-1536. The complainant in this UDRP is a company called EDP – Energias de Portugal, S.A.

Whois records show that the domain name is currently owned by a registrant in China. When I attempted to visit EDP.com, the domain name did not resolve for me. I looked at Archive.org, and I do not see any archived records since 2014.

I did a Historical Whois search at DomainTools, and here is where it gets a bit interesting. According to

I noticed  an interesting UDRP filing I want to share with you. John P. Cusack filed a UDRP against JohnCusack.com. The UDRP was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization, and it is WIPO Case D2016-1460.

I presume the UDRP was filed by the American actor John Cusack, although this is not confirmed. The JohnCusack.com domain name has a registration date of April 13, 2003, and the domain name is currently registered under privacy, so I am unsure of who owns the domain name. At the present time, the domain name is parked, and there is a link at the top of the landing page that says “The domain johncusack.com may be for sale by its owner!”

Here is where things get a bit interesting. When I clicked the link, I was taken to a landing page announcing that the domain name is for sale for just $1,500. You can have a look at the landing page here:

A UDRP has been filed against the valuable GWG.com domain name at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The UDRP is WIPO Case D2016-1420. The complainant in this UDRP proceeding is listed as GWG Holdings, Inc.

GWG.com is registered to an entity in Canada, and the domain name has a creation date of March 24, 1997. The earliest DomainTools Historical Whois record is from 2003, and it appears that the same entity that owned it at that point still  owns this domain name. It is very possible that the registrant is the same as it was pre-2003, but DomainTools does not have archived historical records for this domain name earlier than 2003.

At the present time, GWG.com does not resolve for me. Archive.org shows the last use of the domain name was back in 2009, and the most recent screenshot from Screenshots.com is from 2007. At that time, the heading on the website was “General Web Group.”  Estibot lists the value of GWG.com at $96,000, and it is quite obvious that GWG.com is a valuable domain name.

I did a Google search for the name of the complainant, and the first  result I saw is