How to Protect Your 3 Character Domain Names
Monday, March 24th, 2008
Own a three character domain? You need to play defense.
Three letter domain names are valuable. But owning them carries risk: since so many companies have three character acronyms, they often feel they are entitled to your domain.
The number of pending and recently settled claims on three character domains is staggering. Here are just a handful I found today:
Ace.com
Ace.us
Dsn.com
Rcu.net (claim denied)
Own.tv
Ucp.com (transferred, domain may have been stolen)
Pao.com
Kpn.info
Tcn.com
Cbq.com
Cbq.net
Cbq.org
All.com
It’s the .com challenges that are most troubling because of the value of the domain names. If you own a three character domain, here are some tips to avoid losing them in arbitration:
1. Don’t park them. It’s possible that a company with the same acronym will point to ads on the parked page as infringing their trademark. You need to control the content, and parked pages frequently optimize with ads that can be used against you.
2. Create a site. Even a small site is fine. Your goal here is to make sure no one can claim you have no legitimate use and rights for the domain name. I recently talked with a domainer who owns several three letter domains. He creates an affiliate site for each one.
3. File for a trademark once #2 is done.
Of course, doing this doesn’t prevent you from receiving a UDRP letter. Consider the case of Ace.com and Ace.us. The best I can tell, this domain has been used for a legitimate business for many years. The owner of the sites, WebMagic Ventures, even has a trademark for the term “Ace”.
So who’s challenging the owner of Ace.com and Ace.us? There are a number of companies holding trademarks for the term “Ace”, and I can’t see a reason why any of them should be entitled to this domain. This could be a clear cut case of reverse domain name hijacking, but we’ll have to wait to see. I’m anxiously awaiting a decision.
Tags: three character domains, udrp
Interesting post about 3 letter domain names and the “criminals” wanting to steal them legally from their owners.
Though less important, this is good advice for LLLL’s as well; particularly where SE searches turn up a number of different companies using those letters and/or where there are one or more active/ valid trademarks.
The first thing to do is to point them all to generic landers if you’re using PPC.
If you let your names auto optimize you are asking for trouble.
Does any one have the link to the ‘All.com’ proceeding? I can’t find it.
Also, 2 letter domains are not immune: LH.com is currently pending.
@ GQ- proceedings aren’t published until the decision is made. I sometimes have a way of getting my hands of the evidence/pleadings ahead of time, though
Ahem, ALL LTD of Florida…you know my email address
Here’s a case for LV.com which fortunately was found in favor of the domain owner.
There was a rash of three-letter domain name hi-jackings, and as noted on the list above, some of these disputes may be attempts by the legitimate registrants of the domain names to get them back via the UDRP. This can be done successfully if the complainant had indeed established TM rights in the term at issue prior to the hi-jacking.
@ John, thanks for your comments. That’s what I can tell about UCP.com. If I read it correctly, it appears they may have lost control of the domain twice. It must be painful to wait for a UDRP decision when your domain has been hijacked.
This points to another big problem…how to fix the ease of stealing domains…
“It must be painful to wait for a UDRP decision when your domain has been hijacked.”
And where exactly are the Registrars hiding when this happens?
Patrick
[...] month I wrote about how you can protect your three character domains from companies that want to steal them from you. But apparently I left off some other advice: [...]
[...] Advertisement WebMagic Ventures, owner of Ace.com, has won an arbitration brought against it by ACE Limited, an insurance company. This is an extraordinary case given the value of the underlying domain name and egregious assertions brought by ACE Limited. However, the panel could not charge ACE Limited with reverse domain name hijacking. This is just one of many three character domain names currently in dispute. [...]
[...] WebMagic Ventures, owner of Ace.com, has won an arbitration brought against it by ACE Limited, an insurance company. This is an extraordinary case given the value of the underlying domain name and egregious assertions brought by ACE Limited. However, the panel could not charge ACE Limited with reverse domain name hijacking. This is just one of many three character domain names currently in dispute. [...]
kpn.info and pao.com were denied.
Thanks DVDrip…I’ll take a look at the cases
[...] Owning short domain names comes with risks. They are prized domains, and many people want to get their hands on them. The owner of Ace.com [...]
[...] here’s a case that shows once again how important it is to protect three character domains. Had the ads on the parked pages had nothing to do with body art, my bet is Ricks would still own [...]