Despite the uncertainty surrounding the current labor situation in the National Football League, the Cleveland Browns have filed a UDRP for the Browns.com domain name. The cellar-dwelling Browns, who finished 5-11 last season, use ClevelandBrowns.com for its website.
Browns.com has been owned by a registrant in Italy for a number of years. The Whois History results for this domain name go back to 2003, and it appears to me that it’s been owned by the same entity. At the moment, Browns.com does not resolve.
It does look like there might have been football-related links on the domain name at one point, although the owner may not have control over what links were displayed. I find it strange that the football team has taken so long to file a UDRP for the name though, since they must have known another entity has owned it for so many years.
Look for a Mr. Andrew F Christie (who just dissented AGAIN in the SimplyBusiness.com Case- wipo.int/amc/en/domains/s…ase=D2010-2069 – Thanks to Paul Cotton for the heads up) to be appointed. Will watch this one.
Will be interesting to see what they were displaying and if switching the dns from parkingspa to a blank page is a sign of ” guilt “.
Browns Chicken is a stronger and more well known brand than the cleveland browns, What if cleveland knows this and needed an edge, so they waited till the guy threw up some adsense then they throw up some ads on google knowing they’d be served on the guys site, so they could take a snapshot. People mistakenly believe big companies don’t realize the values of domain names because they don’t spend money buying them, But helloooo they spend 10 times more trying to take it away from people. I mean come on people ,. IF you were selling a car for $5000 and a company decides to spend $50,000 or more in lawyer costs to take it from you,…Anyways Go to icann and research the domains disputes the last 15 years. icann only gives you part of the story some of the rest are found in various news archives etc.
The Rambling Man 🙂
Being a Browns fan, I remember seeing it at an auction at some time within the last year. It was in the one with Angels.com in it. It did not sell. Figured it had UDRP written all over it. The Browns franchise goes way back. I Think the team finally wins at something. I wonder if they made an offer. You would think they could afford the 100k or so it was listed at during the auction.
You would think they can afford it,.. You think ? Of course they can.
Would they have filed the UDRP without the content being related to football and would they have a chance at all without the content being related to football?
There are a few companies that can be associated with this Domain or that could file UDRP but they haven’t done so.
@Mike
They can afford it; however, each expense now goes to the players union rep as another example of how much money the owners have/can make 🙂
Out of curiousity. What would happen if the respondent contacted Brown’s chicken and asked if THEY wanted the domain?
Only the first paragraph was for @Mike. The other half was general. I guess it should go to domainquestions.com.
What about browns.co? Are they after that?
There is a well-known restaurant chain called Browns here in the UK and numerous small businesses called Browns all over the English-speaking world who would have a far better claim that the bullying football team.
While Browns is not a generic dictionary term, it is clearly in wide use for a variety of commercial purposes – not just football related.
I hope the panel decision takes this into account.