The biggest story in the world of business today will likely be the merger of Kraft Foods Group and H.J. Heinz, two of the largest food companies in the world. According to a CNBC article that was published this morning, the new company will be known as The Kraft Heinz Co. This company will become the third largest food company in North America, assuming the merger is completed.
The most logical domain name for this new company, KraftHeinz.com, was registered today by someone in South Korea. It does not appear that the domain registrant is related to the company, although I suppose it is possible. At the moment, KraftHeinz.com seems to resolve to the domain registrar’s default landing page for newly registered domain names (I don’t read Korean, so I cannot confirm this). It appears the registrant also bought HeinzKraft.com, and the domain name resolves to a similar looking landing page.
Update: Interestingly, Kraft-Heinz.com was registered today by brand protection company DNStination Inc.
I presume The Kraft Heinz Co. is going to want the KraftHeinz.com url at some point, and it probably won’t be too difficult for them to get it via legal channels. A search at UDRPsearch.com shows that both Kraft and H.J. Heinz have filed UDRP cases for domain names in the past, with Kraft filing more than 10 cases.
It will be interesting to see how quickly the company tries to get control of KraftHeinz.com. According to a report on Reuters, “the deal is expected to close in the second half of 2015.” I am not sure if the company will need to wait until then to seek legal relief, although I doubt they would since the domain name contains the trademarks of two famous operating companies. I would not be surprised if the registrant receives a letter from company attorneys at some point very soon.
Update 6/1: A UDRP was filed against the KraftHeinz.com domain name.
The sooner a UDRP is filed the better. This is the kind of despicable, parasitic behaviour that gives the domain industry a bad name. People should not leach off company news releases to grab domains domains in the hope to cash in. Bring some pride back to the industry, go about business in an honorable fashion, only make deals that you can sleep comfortably with at night and if this registrant gets a $100K UDRP slap in the face then he deserves it.
What a total moron.
Fortune 500 lawyers surely coming his way along with massive legal expenses.
LOL Have Fun Dude!
I really doubt they’ll use that name or want it. Most likely they will use one brand name or the other.
They announced that they will be using a new company name. If they were going to use one brand or the other, I assume the new company name would be that one brand name.
Interestingly, it looks like DNStination Inc. was able to secure the hyphenated domain name today. I did not check that prior to publishing the article.
Yeah apparently they have registered a few variations so maybe they will want and use kraftheinz.com.
This is what all domainers or domain business deserve:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/03/25/from-tedcruz-ca-to-taylorswift-porn-how-the-golden-age-of-domain-trolling-was-born/
Legislation is required so there is no monopoly, damage, theft, scams, holdings…,..
All this to prevent the Internet is a threat to humanity and use it correctly.
Keith.
Would be funny if they used dingdong .com as their new name.
A UDRP was filed on this domain name: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/case.jsp?case_id=31908