Major League Baseball continues aggressive campaign for team names.
Major League Baseball and the San Francisco Giants want to to get their hands on GiantsBaseball.com. The domain is owned by a Carmel, California man and was registered in 1999, and is subject to arbitration at National Arbitration Forum commenced on August 15.
Although the Giants aren’t playing as well as its neighbors the Los Angeles Angels, it should have better luck obtaining this domain than the Angels had going after Angels.com.
The DomainSponsor parking page for GiantsBaseball.com currently shows ads for “San Francisco Giants”, “Giants Tickets”, and “Giants Schedule”.
The Angels organization lost its battle for the generic domain Angels.com for a number of reasons. The owner of the domain, who lived in Korea, was unaware that the parked domain at Angels.com was showing ads related to baseball because of geo targeting on the domain. The domain showed baseball terms to U.S. visitors but not to him when he visited the site from Korea. Also, the owner registered a trademark in Korea for “Angels” prior to arbitration. And then there’s the issue of “Angels” being a generic term.
While Angels.com was clearly a case of overreaching by the Angels team, I doubt the Giants will have any trouble winning this challenge. Now if only they could win a game or two on the field.
Incidentally, Giants.com is owned by the NFL New York Giants football team.
DR. DOMAIN says
Artie Moreno can cut a check for Angels.com…just as soon as he finds a way to pay Big Tex.