Could Sedo Parking Page Put Jets.com at Risk?

Jets logoWhile watching the New England Patriots play the New York Jets today at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, I have been catching up on some domain news from the past week, including an article about the Jets.com domain sale.

I read that Jets.com was sold by Sedo for $375,000 last week. According to the Whois information, the registrant is currently “Sedo  LLC Domain  Transfer  Escrow  Service” which is standard for domain names that are undergoing an ownership change with Sedo acting as the intermediary.

I also saw that the nameservers are currently set to Sedo’s DNS, ns1.sedoparking.com ns2.sedoparking.com, although I am not sure when those nameservers were changed. Previously, the domain name was owned by a private jet charter service, and the website was a jet airplane booking engine.

At the moment though, it appears that the domain name has advertising related to the NFL’s New York Jets (see screenshot below). There are PPC ads for the following football-related offers:

HSN.com: “New York Jets Shop for Jet’s Gear at HSN Low Prices On NFL Team Merchandise!”

NFLnewsline.com: “Patriots vs Jets Matchup Our NFL Game of the Week! Get the Latest Info & Week 2 predictions.”

Justbuytickets.com/Jets: “NY Jets Tickets Just Buy New York Jets Tickets New York Jets Tickets All Games”

I am not an attorney and have very limited legal knowledge, but I am wondering whether this usage could put the domain name at risk. If there is any risk, I am wondering who has responsibility for this risk, since the domain name is technically registered to Sedo right now pending transfer to the buyer.

This would certainly be a moot point if the NY Jets purchased this domain name, but if they didn’t, I sure hope the new owner will take steps to mitigate the risk ASAP. This is somewhat similar to the Dolphins.com UDRP (domain now owned by the NFL), although the Dolphins still aren’t using Dolphins.com. Incidentally, there was a UDRP filed for Dolphins.com and Jets.com back in 2000, but it was terminated.

Jets.com Screenshot

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

14 COMMENTS

  1. I don´t think that someone would make a claim during the transfer as long as the new owner is not appearing in the whois. Jets is a generic term for airplanes but it is right at the same time, it appears now as a bad faith acting because of the Ads showing up, but in this case it isn´t the buyer, it is Sedo itself.

  2. 1 – Jets is a generic name, the team can’t own usage in the name itself.
    2 – If the Jets team was to complain their damage is only what profit was made by the advertising links during that time, probably not worth the ligation to get it.
    3 – If they had issue they are required by law to notify sedo or the site owner of their dispute and give them a chance to resolve the issue without litigation.
    4 – If the Jets team did not buy the name I doubt they care.

    • @ Don think so

      1) Jets is a generic term meaning flying jet airplanes, not a football team – so advertising for airplanes would not be infringing on the football teams marks.
      2) The Jets could file a UDRP for bad faith registration based on its usage of infringing PPC ads
      3) They registrant is bound by the uniform dispute registration procedure (UDRP). They could challenge a UDRP in the court system, but there are differences between UDRP and law
      4) There was already UDRP filed for this very domain name in 2000 – along with Dolphins.com – so they clear do care. There was another UDRP filed for Dolphins.com in 2009… coincidence?

      wipo.int/amc/en/domains/cases/2000/d0800-0999.html

  3. All names parked at sedo result in a parked page during the escrow process. Maybe boeing bought it, maybe the NY Jets bought it, we won’t know until whois updates but I don’t believe the parking page puts the new owner at risk if anything it makes sedo look like they are capitalizing on not only the sale commission but now also on the parking revenue.

  4. I think you made a very good point Elliot, its a risk not worth taking.

    Looks like sedo may have took notice of your post, the nameservers have now changed to

    Name Servers:
    NS0.WIKIMEDIA.ORG
    NS1.WIKIMEDIA.ORG
    NS2.WIKIMEDIA.ORG

    It does’nt resolve.

  5. Elliot – I totally agree with you. Based on recent WIPO cases, this type of parking could be used as evidence of bad faith in a lawsuit. Maybe SEDO is the one who would get sued and not the new owner, but many big companies are ignorant of the way domain transfers and domain parking works, and would not care about the specifics of the case. They would have their big team of lawyers sue everyone involved.

  6. If you want to sell a domain, put a sales page yourself and have a form there yourself. You can later use sedo to escrow the transaction or use escrow.com

    This article highlights one of the things that make me not like sedo anymore. Are they an escrow service that helps you sell your domains or are they a domain parking company?

    I have asked SEDO repeatedly for some of our domains to only display a for sale page. And yet the pages are filled 99% with ads, with just a small minuscule link saying that the domain “might” be for sale.

    I then switched my domains that were parking oriented and not for sale to google domains parking , guess what I made on average 2 to 2.5 times more money than i was from sedo!!

    So no wonder sedo insists on putting ads on domains, even when one wants to use them just to sell a domain. So the solution is to only use them to conduct a transaction, but not park with them.

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