Sold in 2013, UDRP Filed on MSC.com

Elliot Silver
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16

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I was reading through the most recent UDRP filings at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and I saw that a UDRP was filed for the MSC.com domain name. On the WIPO page for this UDRP, the complainant in this action is listed as a company called MSC Mediterrean [sp?] Shipping Company Holding S.A. It appears that there may be a typo on the WIPO website because that is not how you spell Mediterranean.

Aside from the fact that this is a three letter .com domain name and there are many companies around the world that use the “MSC” initials, this UDRP filing is notable because this domain name sold for quite a bit of money in 2013. According to Ron Jackson’s DNJournal sales report in December of 2013, MSC.com was reportedly sold for €35,000 via Sedo, which was approximately $47,600 USD. At the time of the report, that was the largest public sale of the week.

Since January of this year, MSC.com has been

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UDRP Filed on We.com

Elliot Silver
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10

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According to the WIPO UDRP case database, a UDRP was filed over the two letter We.com domain name. The complainant is listed as WE BRAND S.a.r.l. According to Trademarkia, the company appears to have two US trademarks for “WE,” and the company also appears to have other marks for “WE” in other countries as well. From my research, it appears this is a clothing company that is located in Europe.

We.com has a creation date of March 31, 1992, and the registrant address is based in California. According to DomainTools History Tool, the registrant appears to have been the same since at least early 2007. If you visit We.com, you can see that the domain name is listed for sale, and the domain broker representing the sale of the domain name is John Mauriello of Snapnames / Web.com. I don’t see anything about the complainant at all on the landing page or website, and I don’t think a company should be able to win a UDRP on a descriptive domain name like this.

Before doing a bit of searching for the complainant, I can’t recall ever hearing of the company, despite having traveled to Europe a number of times. There are many companies that come to mind when thinking about the word We and the WE acronym, and I can’t imagine one company would be able to get control of this valuable domain name via UDRP.

My opinion is that We.com is a mid to high seven figure domain name based completely on its own merits. Why should one company be able to use the UDRP system to take control over a high value descriptive domain name like this?

Hopefully the domain owner will hire an experienced UDRP defense attorney and win the case. Better yet, perhaps the owner will be aggressive and file a lawsuit to keep his domain name rather than take a chance with the UDRP proceeding. The later may be more costly, but with the way some UDRP decisions have gone, it might make sense in this case because of the high value of this domain name asset.

I wish the domain owner luck in defending his valuable asset. To me, it appears to be a domain name hijacking attempt.

UDRP Filed on Quebec.com

Elliot Silver
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6

This morning, I was looking through the recent UDRP filings at the World Intellectual Property Organization, and I saw an aggravating one that should almost certainly be denied, hopefully with a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. The Ministre des Relations internationales, de la Francophonie et du Commerce extérieur (Department of International Relations)  has filed a UDRP for the Quebec.com domain name.

Quebec.com is owned by Anything.com, Ltd., a company that owns a large portfolio of exceptional keyword domain names, including YL.com, YE.com, 10.com, and many others. The company has owned this domain name since for at least 10 years  and probably much longer than that (Whois history records for this name stop in 2003 and it has a 1998 creation date). That almost certainly means that

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Boston Globe Covers TrueReligion.com Lawsuit

Elliot Silver
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This morning’s Boston Globe has an article covering the TrueReligion.com domain name lawsuit, and it is worth a read when you have a chance. Andrew Allemann previously wrote about the TrueReligion.com UDRP and the lawsuit that followed the True Religion jeans company’s UDRP loss.

The Globe article discusses the legal implications of this case, and it sounds the alarm to domain name owners should the company be successful in its claims. According to the article,

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How I First Learned of Richard Lau

Elliot Silver
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26

Yesterday afternoon, Richard Lau posted an article about NamesCon, a domain conference taking place in January that he is organizing. I want to share a brief story about how I heard of Richard, who I have come to respect over the last several years.

In August of 2007, I received an email from a strange email address:

Dear Domain Buyer,
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I want sell my domain name [“redacted.com”] , If you intersted to buy this domain, please send your offer in USD.”

When I did a Whois search and then a historical Whois search

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Tips to Prevent Buying Stolen Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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I have been fortunate to never have to deal with an issue involving stolen domain names. I think this is partially attributed to the due diligence I do before buying a domain name, and it’s also probably a bit of luck mixed in as well. It seems like domain name theft has been an issue for many years and will continue to harm the domain industry in the future.

Domain Gang has a good article about stolen domain names that you should read when you get a chance. Theo offers some very good tips about how you can avoid buying stolen domain names.

Because buying a stolen domain name can have serious legal and financial consequences, I want to share a few additional tips that can help you not buy a stolen domain name and can potentially help if you inadvertantly do purchase a stolen domain name.

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