UDRP Filed on We.com

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According to the WIPO UDRP case database, a UDRP was filed over the two letter We.com domain name. The complainant is listed as WE BRAND S.a.r.l. According to Trademarkia, the company appears to have two US trademarks for “WE,” and the company also appears to have other marks for “WE” in other countries as well. From my research, it appears this is a clothing company that is located in Europe.

We.com has a creation date of March 31, 1992, and the registrant address is based in California. According to DomainTools History Tool, the registrant appears to have been the same since at least early 2007. If you visit We.com, you can see that the domain name is listed for sale, and the domain broker representing the sale of the domain name is John Mauriello of Snapnames / Web.com. I don’t see anything about the complainant at all on the landing page or website, and I don’t think a company should be able to win a UDRP on a descriptive domain name like this.

Before doing a bit of searching for the complainant, I can’t recall ever hearing of the company, despite having traveled to Europe a number of times. There are many companies that come to mind when thinking about the word We and the WE acronym, and I can’t imagine one company would be able to get control of this valuable domain name via UDRP.

My opinion is that We.com is a mid to high seven figure domain name based completely on its own merits. Why should one company be able to use the UDRP system to take control over a high value descriptive domain name like this?

Hopefully the domain owner will hire an experienced UDRP defense attorney and win the case. Better yet, perhaps the owner will be aggressive and file a lawsuit to keep his domain name rather than take a chance with the UDRP proceeding. The later may be more costly, but with the way some UDRP decisions have gone, it might make sense in this case because of the high value of this domain name asset.

I wish the domain owner luck in defending his valuable asset. To me, it appears to be a domain name hijacking attempt.

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

10 COMMENTS

  1. Never hear of them, despite the fact thar I live in europe. Seems to be a big company with a lot of shop around europe but not in my country. The operate through weclothing dot com
    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WE_(clothing)

  2. I didn’t check all screenshots of the we.com site all over those years, but if they did not show any ads or references to clothing, IMHO there is no way the complainant can get that name via UDRP or lawsuit.
    It looks like the complainant changed its name to WE in 1999 (TM registered in 1998), so if there are no references whatsoever to clothing on the we.com site since that date, they have no rights to the name.
    Plus, this is clearly a generic domain, plus there are a lot of TM for the term “WE” in different Nice classes.
    I think they are just trying to get the name for cheap, as usual …
    I see a likely new candidate for Rick’s Hall of Shame 😀

  3. I actually sold WE.org some years ago (roughly 5-6) was contacted by the people (in the domain industry) who bought and flipped WE.com since at the time the seller didnt want to sell them the .org if memory serves me right. I believe if they wanted to they could give some insight as to who bought the dot com. All I know is we both bought the we.com and we.org domain from the same seller. If I recall they flipped the .com for very good money, as did I the .org so there is a lot on the line here.

    Just a little fyi.

  4. Alf bought it at auction… It was a great name then, and still is, but non specific so really needs either a brand behind it or a movement. There has been a We Media since late nineties, and one of the major networks has Tm on We for a media channel.

    Definitely smells like a hijack.

  5. Shame on them 🙂

    Being from the EU I know the company. It’s a dutch fashion company. Quite big actually. Lots of retail stores as well. They run under wefashion.com. Guess they are jelaous because their rival Hennes & Mauritz is rocking under HM.com

  6. Alf did not buy it at auction.
    Josh almost has it right 😉

    …and the fashion company is going to get a serious ass kicking.

  7. This is all becoming completely crazy,it’s like walking into a bank and DEMANDING 2 or 3 million dollars,there needs to be some reverse high jacking rules put in place with serious fines for even attempting to do this stuff,then they might think twice….or are the lawyers pushing the sh$t up hill to make money??

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