A few weeks ago, I reported on the Miami Dolphins UDRP filing for the domain name Dolphins.com. After a short period of time, the UDRP was suspended, and the Whois information changed, showing the National Football League as the new owner of the domain name. I assumed that the team wanted to use the domain name for their website, rather than their current MiamiDolphins.com domain name.
With the football season set to kick off this coming week, and the Miami Dolphins scheduled to play the Atlanta Falcons on September 13, one would anticipate that now would be a time that Dolphins.com gets considerable type-in traffic. People are looking for rosters, stats, team schedule, tickets, collectibles…etc. Rather than forwarding the domain name to the current website to capture the traffic, the domain name is not resolving – a big mistake. I don’t believe they would have anything to lose whatsoever by forwarding the domain name to the current website.
At the moment, there is a splash page on MiamiDolphins.com that says “the all new Miami Dolphins.com Coming September 8.” Because of the graphic, I can’t tell if they are planning to change the primary url to Dolphins.com or to keep it the same, but I sure hope they decide to use Dolphins.com instead of having it not resolve.
Has any sales price been reported?
@ Patrick
They filed a UDRP…
Correct but as you said it was then suspended. I guess that could mean two things, either they settled on a fair sales price and just purchased it or it was handed over. My guess they paid something for it.
Perhaps, but we won’t know until/unless there is a public filing. IMO, there was some pretty damning evidence of bad faith with all the football links and football stadium image. They might have settled for some cash in lieu of an expensive and time consuming lawsuit.
“might have settled for some cash in lieu of any expenses and time consuming lawsuit”
Agreed
This is interesting. Elliot and Patrick what do each of you think the team should do considering they have both names? Should they use MiamiDolphins.com and have Dolphins.com forwarded to it? Or the opposite? They could probably also use MiamiDolphins.com as their main site. And use Dolphins.com in their on television advertising and track who comes through the redirect from particular form of advertising? Or why don’t they just keep one site a team site and the other a fan oriented site. Similar to what MiamiHerald did with MiamiHerald.com and Miami.com
I would recommend forwarding Dolphins.com to MiamiDolphins.com because MiamiDolphins.com has lots of inbound links and indexed pages. It really doesn’t matter if you have both names, IMO.
@Samir – Personally I believe they should keep it simple with one site. I would forward Dolphins.com their existing online presence with MiamiDolphins.com.
That sounds like the best thing to do.
Marchex lost a 6 figure domain because they rely on machines too much.. All it should of taken was 2 minutes of a human touch to keep things on the safe side and the $$$$ rolling in.
Too bad, but this wasn’t the first time somebody has lost a domain because of stupidity and definitely won’t be the last time.
Did the (previous?) owner of Dolphins.com display content related to the Miami Dolphins? If that’s the case, he probably lost a truly generic domain due to his own fault. If he didn’t, it’d be another shocking case of a WIPO tribunal not seeing past the name and into the use of a generic term.
See screenshot in my initial article 🙂
Another lazy parker… The previous owner of dolphins.com could have invested very minimally and built an informational site about dolphins (the animal) complete with PPC instead of putting a pic of the football stadium there and football links. The NFL team probably just took screenshots of that parked site to court and claim they are profiting from the well known football club. I guess the NFL just used their big bankroll to keep the prev owner with mounting legal fees in what might be an ongoing case, and the guy was put in a position where he must sell out or else risk going broke from legal fees.
Miami Dolphins makes for a stronger TM than Dolphins.
I would choose the former for protection of the TM if it was my choice. Otherwise they have to go after so many different Dolphin type domains to protect the name, as they are required to protect the TM. If you don’t protect, you lose TM enforcemnt abilities in the future.