GAP, the clothing retailer, has filed a UDRP against the Gap.org domain name. The UDRP was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization. The UDRP is WIPO Case D2019-2337.
Gap.org was originally created in April of 1997, making the domain name over 20 years old. The domain name is currently registered under Whois privacy at GoDaddy, so the current registrant is not publicly known. According to NameBio, the Gap.org domain name sold on Flippa in 2016 for $3,850. You can see the archived Flippa listing here.
At the time of publication, the domain name does not resolve to an active website for me.
I know that Gap has a pretty strong trademark on the GAP branding, but I don’t see how it should win this UDRP. Not only is gap a very common word, but there are many companies, organizations, and people who either have GAP as their acronym or initials. With the domain name not resolving for me, I can’t see how the clothing retailer will be able to prove that the domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith.
I will keep my eye on the filing.
Update: The decision is not yet published, but the WIPO website is reporting this as a win for the complainant.
http://www.gap.org seems to be redirecting to http://www.gap.com – Are you seeing it offline for you?
I think the forwarding may be done by a visitor’s ISP rather than the domain registrant.
Check from your phone or a different ISP.
I think you’re right. We’re using ATT Uverse. When I try with my iPhone with WIFI off, it’s offline.
I wonder what right does Uverse have to modify the intention of the domain owner?
Looks like it was pointing to a site promoting watches until earlier this year. Registrant has screwed up and this could go either way depending on the panelists view of registered in bad faith.
Where do you see that?
Wayback Machine has plenty of saved timestamps for this URL.
When I looked at Archive.org yesterday, all of the entries were blank. I tried to refresh and used a different browser thinking it was timing out, but I had no luck.
Here’s a screenshot of what I see:
https://domaininvesting.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Screen-Shot-2019-09-27-at-11.52.43-AM.png
Thats correct, because you open the certain timestamp and there is URL forwarding, so Archive.org tries to actually forward to its own copy of the target site, but in this case there is no saved copy of it, so the result is blank.
You need to check the search results from the main page of WM:
https://imgur.com/9rJNIGJ
Example URL which tells you about forwarding:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190318143752/http://gap.org/
I don’t see the forwarding in 2018: http://web.archive.org/web/20180205115007/http://gap.org/
Hmm, true, your results are and were fine. I should have looked at the calendar – green circles show where the forwarding begins (Dec 2018). Anyway, related to the case, even that period may be bad enough for the name owner.
The clothing company has a long history of over-reaching domain name complaints and bullying of legitimate domain owners. See, for example, this 2012 UDRP: https://www.adrforum.com/domaindecisions/1419226.htm … which they rightfully lost.
Domain owners should be up in arms when a large company tries to seize an asset from someone in the community. Why is everyone so nonchalant about this? There is no justification for this dastardly act on the part of Gap Inc. to try to abuse udrp to wrestle this domain name from its owner. How about we support fellow domain owners when this happens rather than finding bogus reasons why reverse hijacking is legitimate.