According to an article published earlier this afternoon on Bloomberg, CBS and Viacom will be merging into one company in an all-stock deal. The new joint entity will be called ViacomCBS. The news was shared via Bloomberg’s Twitter feed:
JUST IN: CBS and Viacom are set to combine in an all-stock merger. The media behemoth formed will be called ViacomCBS, according to a person familiar with the deal https://t.co/D8FgpuYkLg pic.twitter.com/ItzdTC8QN3
— Bloomberg (@business) August 13, 2019
Interestingly, it does not look like either CBS nor Viacom secured the ViacomCBS.com domain name. ViacomCBS.com was registered to an entity in Korea on April 24, 2019. It looks like the domain name has a default hosting company or domain registrar landing page. It also looks like the same registrant bought CBSViacom.com in January of 2018.
Assuming this domain name was not registered by someone affiliated with either company (or representing either company or the merged company), if the company wants this domain name, Viacom or CBS will either have to pay the registrant, spend money on a UDRP, or litigate. If I were to guess, I would say #1 or #2 is more likely, depending on how quickly the company would want to have the domain name and whether or not it would be willing to pay a third party to buy it.
Personally, I stay away from domain names like these. I think the likely payoff is very small compared to the risk of a UDRP. It would seem like a pretty easy win for one or both companies considering the two famous trademarks, although some companies prefer to pay a token amount to avoid a UDRP.
It will be interesting to see what happens with these domain names.
How in the world did they know a merger would happen? Has to be someone on the inside/connected, or a very lucky guess.
There is a party who use dynadot and undeveloped aka dan to simply watch all new Tm registrations, and sell for like sub $1500, they are quick, and they have made a huge business out of it, albeit while giving domainers a black eye. Neither dynadot or dan will shut them down.
I’ve noticed, but how do you know “they have made a huge business out of it”?
if I had a choice to either register ViacomCBS .com or the best gtld on earth I would register ViacomCBS . com atleast I could make 500 bucks on that rather than the sh!t gtld.
Viacom and CBS have been owned by the same person for many years. As I recall, there was some kind of family (daughter?) fighting over the direction of the two companies. It was logical they would eventually merge.
“Personally, I stay away from domain names like these. I think the likely payoff is very small compared to the risk of a UDRP. ”
I stay away from names like this because it’s the pure definition of cybersquatting.
Well, yes, that, too.