A UDRP has been filed against the descriptive Hottie.com domain name at the World Intellectual Property Organization. the UDRP is WIPO case #D2016-1975. According to Urban Dictionary, a hottie is “A very attractive person; can be either male or female.” For instance, I regularly call my wife a “hottie.”
The Hottie.com domain name was created in September of 1997, making it 19 years old earlier this month. The domain name is registered under privacy at Uniregistry. From what I can see using DomainTools Historical Whois records, it looks like the domain name has been registered privately since late 2006.
Hottie.com is currently parked at Sedo where it shows adult-related links. In my opinion, adult or dating related content is what I would expect to find on Hottie.com. I would also imagine this might be the reason for privacy registration, although many people have it for other legitimate reasons.
The complainant in this case is a company called Easton Corp Pty Ltd. I did a Google search for the company name and “hottie” to see why the UDRP may have been filed, and I came across a website on Hottie.com.au where the T&C page mentions this company name. According to the company about us page, Hottie was founded in 2004, which is 8 years after the domain name was originally registered.
At least on the looks of it to me, the details appear similar to the Patricks.com UDRP, which was won by the respondant. In that case, a UDRP was filed by an Australia-based brand that operated on the same keyword .com.au domain name as the .com UDRP. In both cases, the .com domain names were created before the companies were created.
It doesn’t seem right to me that a company could take away an aged, well-known keyword .com domain name like this. A domain name like Hottie.com has significant value, and this is speculation on my part, but perhaps the UDRP was filed when an acquisition attempt was unsuccessful. I will be following along as this UDRP progresses and will share an update when a decision is rendered.
Update: According to UDRPSearch.com, the complaint was denied. The decision has not yet been publicly published, so I don’t have other details yet.
Hottie Australia:
https://www.facebook.com/Hottie.australia
They have Australian trademarks for “Hottie” as it applies to:
Class 25: Lingerie, T-shirts, shirts, pants, belts, slippers, boots, footwear, sportswear, clothing of imitations of leather, drawers, gloves, headbands, jackets, jerseys, knitwear, layettes, leather clothing, ready-made clothing, wristbands
Class 30: Popcorn, candied popcorn, candy for food, meat pies, meat gravies, corn chips, confectionery, ices
Class 39: Delivery of take-away and fast food, drive-through and/or drive-up fast food, travel
Class 42: Clothing and fashion designing, clothing designs, computer software, website and digital design
Class 43: Preparation of take-away and fast food, services for providing food and drink
Their 2015 US tm application at the USPTO stalled and was deemed abandoned in 2016, but it was reinstated:
http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=86735856&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch
Founder appears to be an entrepreneur with a background in law:
https://www.facebook.com/R0CCC
Regardless, if the registrant of the .com defends the domain it should be a straightforward defense: weak mark, generic term, registrant makes use of the exact meaning of the word with adult references, aged domain predates any marks by at least 7 years.
The bad news: Registrant appears to be in Turkey, maybe limited resources.
Great post Elliot….valuable info to domainers…i think its easy and cheap cost to file a udry rather than negotiate and own the domain….udrp is now becoming a fashion for domain industry.
Bingo !!! Asad, you are right on the money.
It is worth it to him to spend $ 4-5,000. for a domain worth $ xxx,xxx. for his brand.
Perhaps a firm of principled lawyers will step forward and represent this domain name holder “Pro Bono” (English meaning: for the public good).
Someone like Washington D.C. lawyer Ari Meltzer who is defending the Granny pro bono in the “Celebrity versus the Granny” case http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/27/narcissist_heidi_powell_wants_her_dotcom
Crazy, what is happening in domaining world? I would not even need 1 second to consider that this is madness. If this UDRP is approved, then ICANN should investigate the whole UDRP business, I truly find it sometimes shady.