“Sorely misguided” complainant loses bid for Fired.com.

[This is the second Domain Dunce award for 2008. See the first one for Verizon.] What do you do if you want a domain that’s already registered and you don’t want to pay for it? Furthermore, you have no chance of winning a UDRP arbitration because the domain was registered years before your first use of the domain? And the domain is generic? And it isn’t infringing on your brand?

According to World2Work, you go ahead and file a UDRP.

I read through many UDRP domain name cases this year, and Fired.com may take the cake for most egregious attempt to steal a domain name. World2Work, founded by Scott Sargis, operates Fired.tv. It wanted Fired.com, so Sargis enlisted his lawyer John Franczyk to go after the domain. They believed that they should get the domain because the current owner hadn’t used it yet.

The arbitration panel found that World2Work didn’t fulfill the first requirement of an arbitration case (that the domain was confusingly similar to its trademark) so it didn’t even consider the other two requirements. It’s rare that a case doesn’t even pass the first hurdle.

The panel said Sargis and Franczyk were “sorely misguided” in their understanding of trademarks and domain names.

By the way, Fired.com’s owner has put it up for sale.

Uniform company files arbitration to get Peaches.com domain.

Peaches.com would
be sweeter.

Peaches Uniforms, a seller of fashion uniforms and scrubs to women in the medical industry, has filed an arbitration request with National Arbitration Forum to gain control of the domain name Peaches.com.

Peaches Uniforms, founded in 1987, filed for a trademark on the term Peaches for medical uniforms in 2006. The trademark was granted in April 2007.

Peaches.com was originally registered in 1995. The current owner, 24-7 Outdoors, Inc., has owned the domain since at least 2003, the earliest date historical whois records are available on DomainTools. At the time, the domain was registered to The Peach Connection and 24-7 Outdoors.

Earlier this year, Peaches.com forwarded to a parking page with ads for medical uniforms. Since at least October it has forwarded to web pages not related to medical uniforms.

Peaches Uniforms will have to jump two big hurdles if it has any hopes of winning this battle.

First, the domain was registered several years prior to Peaches Uniforms even registering its current domain PeachesUniforms.com and more than a decade before the company filed for a trademark on “Peaches”. Proving a bad faith registration will be challenging. At the time the domain was registered, is it likely that the registrant knew of Peaches Uniforms and bought the domain with the company in mind? With such a generic term and the company being in a small niche, this will be a tough sell to the panel.

Second, Peaches Uniforms has had a web presence for a long time. Why wait until the last month of 2008 to filed a UDRP to get the domain Peaches.com? Surely the company has been aware of the existence of peaches.com for a long time. A UDRP arbitration panel will sometimes find against a complainant’s claim that there was confusion between the domain and its brand if it takes too long to file a UDRP.. For example, in a case about CapitolCorridor.com, the panel wrote “Complainant also contends that it only recently learned of the existence of capitolcorridor.com as a reason for its six-year delay in asserting its rights. The Panel gives this unsupported assertion little weight, as it is difficult to believe that the owners of capitolcorridor.org could reasonably remain unaware of the existence of capitolcorridor.com for over six years.”

I don’t have more details about the ins and outs of the case, but I’ll anxiously await the decision and post a follow up when it is handed down.

GoDaddy tops last year’s giving by $300,000.

With all of the negative news I’ve written about Go Daddy this year, it’s nice to end the year on an up note. Today the company announced that its total philanthropic giving for the year is $1.7M, topping last year’s $1.4M in giving. That’s about $1,000 per employee, a very respectable number.

Go Daddy supports a number of non-profits from local (Phoenix Children’s Hospital) to international (Make A Wish Foundation). According to the company, it has donated to about three dozen charities over the past two years.

The company allows non-profit organizations to apply to receive funding. An online application is available on the company’s web site.

Given the down economy, especially in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area where the company is based, I suspect the local community is ecstatic to have the company around — more jobs, more charity support, and more tax revenue.

Have an opinion on domain registrars? Review domain registrars at RegistrarJudge.com!

As the year crawls to a close, here’s a look back at the most viewed stories of 2008.

Good riddance.

That’s what most people are saying to 2008. After losing half their retirement savings, seeing the value of their homes plummet, and fearing for their futures, most people want to forget 2008 ever happened.

But the domain name world survived. Here are the top 10 stories on Domain Name Wire for the year ranked by number of views.

1. Standard Tactics, LLC: How GoDaddy Profits from Expired Domains – This expose on Go Daddy resulted in a phone conversation with the company’s CEO…and the closure of a questionable subsidiary.

2. Seinfeld Isn’t Laughing about JerrySeinfeld.com – Not a huge story to domainers, but apparently entertainment buffs got a big kick out of it over at Fark.

3. Expired Domain Services Let Employees Bid Against Customers – Another story that got results. Go Daddy instituted a new rule forbidding employees from bidding on its expired domain auctions. Most other company’s have strict rules against this.

4. Network Solutions Faces PR Nightmare Over Domain FrontRunning – Go Daddy wasn’t the only registrar to face controversy this year. Network Solutions’ ill advised “customer protection measure” didn’t sit well with the internet community.

5. Yahoo Kills Domain Arbitrage: Fallout for Google, Others – A number of people quit their jobs after they discovered domain parking arbitrage. Yahoo sent them back to work in February.

6. Dell: “We’re F’d” – Computer maker Dell registered some unsavory names this year. Call it brand protection.

7. Google Lets Advertisers Opt Out of Domain Parking Sites – After lots of pressure, Google began letting advertisers opt-out of having their ads show up on parked pages. A lot of advertisers report that such ads don’t work well for them; I’ve found the opposite to be true.

8. Domain Scam: US Copyright Registry – another scam targeting domain name owners.

9. Editorial: Where Network Solutions Went Wrong – my commentary on Network Solutions’ “customer service protection measure”.

10. Google Offers Domain Parking Direct to Publishers – just this month Google turned the domain industry on its head by offering domain parking services directly to Google Adsense clients.

Verizon likes to play both sides of the fence. For that we give it an award.

With just a few days left in 2008, I thought I’d write about a couple of the more egregious stories in domain names this year. Think of it as the dumbest moments in domains.

The first winner is telecom giant Verizon (NYSE: VZ).

Verizon, a member of Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), aggressively pursues cybersquatters that infringe on its trademarks. There’s nothing wrong with that. The company should aggressively pursue cybersquatters.

But here’s the problem. Like some other members of CADNA and several other big corporations, Verizon is one of the biggest typosquatters in the world.

Users of some of its internet services get their browsers hijacked when they enter a domain name that doesn’t exist. The browser shows a page of pay-per-click ads related to what they typed in. And since just about every generic domain name someone types in exists today (either parked or active), you can bet than 99.9% of the non-existent domains for which Verizon shows ads are trademark typos.

So while Verizon is filing lawsuits to protect its brand, it is monetizing just about every other company’s trademarks…even its fellow CADNA members’ trademarks.

According to an article in Modern Domainer earlier this year, Verizon explained at a trademark conference that the difference between its parked pages and domain owners’ parked pages is that its pages are “a service“. Right.

Fortunately, someone called Verizon out on its game this year. Verizon sued Navigation Catalyst Systems, Inc. for cybersquatting. Navigation Catalyst filed a response alleging that Verizon was infringing its trademarks. According to court documents, the case was settled out of court. It looks like Navigation Catalyst didn’t pay anything and simply agreed to stop infringing Verizon brands. It seems that Verizon didn’t want that case to set a precedent.

Other culprits in this trademark-infringing, browser-hacking scheme include Gateway, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and Time Warner.

Congratulations Verizon. You’re the first ever winner of the Domain Name Wire Domain Dunce award.