As news spreads of a presumed iPhone announcement from Verizon Wireless tomorrow, commentators have been discussing some related domain names that are now owned by Verizon. For instance, iPhoneForVerizon.com now appears to be owned by Verizon. The company fiercely defends it’s trademarks, so this is no surprise to me.
Perhaps the best iPhone / Verizon domain name would be VerizoniPhone.com, which does not appear to be owned by either Apple or Verizon Wireless. Instead, it appears to be registered to a California resident and registered with Go Daddy.
According to a historical snapshot available on DomainTools, the domain name appears to have previously had a standard Godaddy landing page, which generally contains pay per click links.
However, the landing page seems to have suffered the same fate as that of the WikiLeaks.com domain name. Instead of a PPC-filed lander, there is a graphic that says, “Sorry! This site is not currently available.” I don’t know if there is a way to tell if Go Daddy intentionally isn’t monetizing it or if the customer changed the landing page, but it seems to be a smart move to avoid litigation for monetizing this domain name.
A big question I have though is if Go Daddy is responsible for removing the PPC landing page on this domain name, does it put the company at risk with other potential trademark names that are being monetized by them on their coming soon pages?
Could other trademark holders argue that if Go Daddy is willing and able to change the landing page for a name like VerizoniPhone.com, they should be doing it for all trademark names? I have no legal expertise but think it’s interesting.
Oh… and I am very eager to hear the news… You can be sure my Blackberry will become a relic once the iPhone is available on the Verizon network.
GoDaddy has been putting up that ugly “not currently available” page for a while. I have 200 or so names parked with them. I called them about it, when it happened on one of my pages, and they told be the ad feed provider (google?) would not show ads on that page. I have had it done with some domains that were questionable whether or not they were trademark, and it has happened to others, that I don’t really know why it happened, other than they were expired domains and may have been on some sort of black list. They do this a lot, so it’s not really an isolated incident.
This point will be moot soon as the name will be in either Apple’s or Verizon’s hands shortly.
You wrote: “Perhaps the best iPhone / Verizon domain name would be VerizoniPhone.com,…”
What, if Apple will also fiercely defend it’s trademarks?
An iPhone is an iPhone is an iPhone and allways belongs to the trademark holder Apple, or?
1) The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sued Godaddy. Here is the latest attempt on Godaddy’s part to dismiss the lawsuit, which attempt got swat down: http://www.scribd.com/doc/45791939/cacd-031011409332
The suit is for squatting its trademark and profiting. It seeks $100,000 per domain, and there are about 100 domains.
2) Same with UBid vs Godaddy – over 100 names using “ubid” or “redtag” trademark. Ubid sued in Illinois, and Godaddy got it thrown out over jurisdiction, but the big news is a judge reinstated the complaint, saying Godaddy advertises and profits in the state of Illinois: http://wislawjournal.com/blog/2010/09/30/godaddy-subject-to-suit-out-of-state
Im not sure you can read much into a domain resolving to that page. I use GD, among others, to register domains and host websites and Ive seen that page a lot. Usually it shows while network changes are underway, like nameserver or dns changes. If the hosting account/vps isnt set up properly or if something is causing some other error that page can show too.
There goes the iPhone. The verizon network absolutely blows. Sad news is what this is – that iPhone is going over to Verizon.