GoogleCoronavirus.com Subject of UDRP Filing (Update)

It looks like we have our first Coronavirus-related UDRP filing. It appears that Google has filed a UDRP against the GoogleCoronavirus.com domain name at the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), according to UDRPSearch.com. It is case #1888606. Because NAF does not report the name of the complainant until the decision is published, we can only assume the complainant is Google.

GoogleCoronavirus.com was registered 11 days ago. Interestingly, the domain name is registered under Whois privacy at Google’s own domain registrar. Based on this, it would appear that Google does not proactively prevent people from registering domain names with their own trademarks. This would be an interesting point to make if contacted by an authority (like an Attorney General) who expects Google to proactively prevent coronavirus domain names from being registered when it is not even protecting its own trademarks from being registered by third parties.

I don’t really see the point of registering a domain name like GoogleCoronavirus.com or any other trademark domain name that is similar to this. Filing and winning a UDRP on obvious trademark domain names is pretty straightforward, and most companies would probably rather pay a dispute organization like NAF or WIPO than reward a speculator.

I would imagine this will be an easy win for Google, and it should be a reminder to people that registering obvious trademark domain names is a bad idea and a waste of money.

Update: As mentioned in the comment section, Google also filed a UDRP against CoronavirusGoogle.com, so this was not the first coronavirus-related domain name as I thought.