Large Companies Aren’t Immune to UDRP Filings

Merriam Webster defines the word “botanica” as “a shop that deals in herbs and charms used especially by adherents of Santeria.” When it comes to domain names, botanica is a popular keyword, with DomainTools showing 190 domain names registered with botanica as the keyword. In my opinion, Botanica.com is the most valuable of these registered domain names.

Unfortunately for the registrant of Botanica.com, a UDRP was filed against the domain name at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The complainant in this UDRP is a company called Botanica GmbH. I believe this company operates on a ccTLD extension.

Botanica.com does not currently resolve to an active website. I was curious to learn who owns Botanica.com, and I was a bit surprised to see that it is registered at CSC, a corporate domain name registrar popular amongst major brands. Indeed, a big company owns this domain name. Getty Images, a major photo media company, is the owner of the Botanica.com domain name.

From what I can tell using the Whois History Tool at DomainTools, Getty has been the registrant of this domain name for more than 12 years. I imagine the domain name was acquired as part of a larger corporate acquisition, and that company owned Botanica.com for longer than that.

I can’t imagine the complainant is going to be able to prove all aspects of the UDRP, but that is my non-legal quick look at the filing. I am curious to know if the complainant tried to buy the domain name but did not have success with that and followed up with the UDRP filing.

It’s not often a major company like Getty Images is on the receiving end of a UDRP filing. We shall see how the dispute turns out, but at least the respondent is in a position to be able to defend the domain name in this dispute.

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

3 COMMENTS

  1. great example of how the demand for one word dot coms is at one of its highest point in a very long time.
    i suppose with the right panel an opinion of non use might resonate ?
    And at that I cannot see a whole lot of deep pocket buyers
    tx elliot

  2. Hello Elliot,
    Your content, just gets better. After Rick Schwartz says his piece, on Wednesday lots of Big Dogs are coming into the money Pool. JAS 5/3/2021

    Gratefully and respectfully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) Metal Tiger, Former (Rockefeller I.B.E.C. Strategic Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed C.B.O.C. Commodity Hedge Strategist) Domain Master, (UseBiz.com)

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