With .CO domain names now available to register for almost a year, I did some research on the number of UDRP cases for ccTLD domain names filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization so far in 2011. These numbers don’t reflect the actual number of domain names, but just the number of cases filed (doesn’t differ by much but pointing it out).
On forums, my blog, and elsewhere, I read people’s comments about how .CO domain names would make for a field day for trademark and IP attorneys, and I did a brief analysis to see if this assumption is true to date, at least in terms of the number of UDRP filings so far in 2011 at WIPO.
Based only on assumptions, one would be likely to assume that there would be hundreds of UDRP filings because .CO is so close to .com. One might also assume that .CO would have far more UDRP filings than every other extension. While .CO did have more UDRP filings than almost all other ccTLDs that are listed at WIPO, I was personally surprised to see that .NL has the most UDRP filings in 2011. In my opinion, this assumption is proven to be wrong, at least so far.
One thing you’ll note is that not all ccTLDs are listed below. A number of popular ccTLD registries have their own dispute policies, such as .CA’s CDRP or Nominet’s DRS (.co.uk) as examples.
ccTLD UDRP filings in 2011 at WIPO:
- .AE – 0
- .AG – 0
- .AM – 0
- .AS – 0
- .AU – 16
- .BR – 1
- .BZ – 0
- .CC – 3
- .CD – 0
- .CH – 10
- .CO – 37
- .CV – 0
- .CY – 0
- .DO – 1
- .EC – 0
- .ES – 31
- .FJ – 1
- .FR – 17
- .GT – 0
- .IE – 2
- .IR – 1
- .KY – 1
- .LA – 0
- .LC – 0
- .LI – 0
- .MA – 0
- .ME – 5
- .MX – 19
- .NL – 44
- .NU – 1
- .PA – o
- .PE – 1
- .PH – 3
- .RO – 5
- .SC – 1
- .SO – 1
- .TK – 0
- .TM – o
- .TV – 6
- .VE – 1
- .WS – 1
Now take into account how many years each has been in existence and taking registrations, things don’t look too encouraging for ‘one’ of those two. Just saying.
@ Kevin
Less than 50 UDRPs out of over 1,000,000 registrations is pretty remarkable, IMO, especially considering the general domainer consensus that it’s “just a typo of .com.”
IMO perception and reality don’t reconcile.
Not many companies know .co yet.
Let’s see what the results will be with a longer time period. Time will tell.
I am expecting a lot more udrp will be filed in coming years imo. Its a risk every .co should consider and risk factors. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. High risk imo
The ammount of .NL is high due to way how you can file a trademark or trademarks wich encourages reverse hijacking.
Second to take down typo domains you can only use a WIPO. The Dutch registry follows a mediation process in conjuction with WIPO..
Third there is a fair ammount of typo squatters operating in the .NL market.
.DE is prolly missing due to the fact that most companies go straight to German court. That is a ccTLD you do want todo any typosquatting. I seen a few court cases where Sony got their bravia domains back. German judges are pretty quick to set the fine to a max of 50k Euro’s.
Most other TLD’s have an ARD where the loser has to pay up around 2200 USD. So you don’t want to do any squatting there 😉
The majority of the other ccTLD’s are still under developed registration wise. Mostly due to registration restrictions and they are hard to register.
you know
UDRPs can go the other way as well.
it is a 2-way street.
I know of tons of .Co sites developed with huge traffic and the .com version is a parked page.
Tons of them?
Not comparing apples to apples. .co udrp’s should be looked at in relation to gTLD’s (.biz, .info, etc). Regardless, still amazing to see such a low number of cases considering 1m regs. The .co folks are very tm friendly…
When “Cline” says:
“tons”; he means he found 3 after hours of looking …
“huge”; he means traffic of 10-25/day …
“.co”; he really and actually means … .com
tons I mean 100’s
figurative of speech
I once new this guy had a site of all places on a .NET
with a alexa ranking of less than 10,000 and he was thinking of going after the .COM version of his .NET site
the .com version was simply parked.
@ Robert
“I once new this guy had a site of all places on a .NET
with a alexa ranking of less than 10,000 and he was thinking of going after the .COM version of his .NET site
the .com version was simply parked.”
Fascinating Story.
I once knew this man from Nantucket…
Brad
Many more .co UDRP’s to come, I suspect. Hopefully, this means they are desirable properties. I’m curious to know how many companies go after .biz.