A UDRP was filed at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) against the generic Glory.com domain name. The UDRP filing is WIPO Case D2017-1900.
Glory.com was created in February of 1995, making this domain name more than 22 years old. The domain name is registered to a company called MicroStrategy, Inc., a publicly traded company whose stock trades on the NASDAQ market (symbol: MSTR). The company has a market cap of nearly $1.5 billion USD. The earliest Whois history record at DomainTools is from 2002, and MicroStrategy was the registrant at that time. It is likely that the company owned Glory.com longer than that. At the time of publication, Glory.com does not resolve for me. I think this domain name is easily worth 6 figures and potentially more.
The complainant in this UDRP is an entity called Glory Ltd. I did a Google search for “Glory Ltd” and the top result was for a company that operates on Glory-Global.com. There is also a stock call-out from Google that shows (what appears to be) a related entity that uses the Glory.co.jp ccTLD domain name. Assuming this is the Glory Ltd. that filed the UDRP, it is clear why the company would want to upgrade to the valuable Glory.com domain name, but it is not clear why this publicly traded would file a UDRP for Glory.com.
When I did a Google search for the word “glory,” the complainant did not appear in the top results for me. The first results were for the following websites:
- Dictionary.com definition of glory
- IMDB listing for Glory the movie from 1989
- Wikipedia entry for Glory the movie
- Merriam-webster.com definition of glory
- Glory Kickboxing
If I were to guess, I don’t think the complainant has much of a chance of winning this UDRP. I would bet MicroStrategy has an in-house IP lawyer who will defend the company’s right to own this descriptive domain name, or perhaps they will bring on an outside counsel with UDRP experience. I do not see how the complainant will be able to prove that the registrant bought and is using the domain name in bad faith. Even if the complainant were to prevail, I presume the domain registrant would take them to court considering it is the registrant of other high value domain name assets.
I will be curious to know if the complainant tried to buy Glory.com and when their efforts failed decided to file a UDRP. We will see all of the details once the decision is rendered.
Update: Complaint was denied.
Interesting. The equivalent domain in spanish, gloria.com, also had a UDRP complaint in 2002 (the UDRP filing is WIPO Case D2002-0056) and the complaint was denied.
Thanks for sharing that – I had not noticed.
Looks like both parties in this UDRP are different than that one: http://www.udrpsearch.com/wipo/d2002-0056
Perhaps the Japanese company should settle for Gloryhole.com instead.
Gloryhole… I don’t think they can afford that. They should try for Gutterhole.Shithole
A perfect DOMAIN for them