Two big companies fail to impress domain arbitrators.
To big companies — merchandiser Sears and credit provider Diners Club International — found themselves on the losing end of domain disputes yesterday.
Sears lost a challenge for the domain names my-gofer.biz/info/net/org and mygofer.info. Sears has been using the trademark in commerce for a delivery service. But the domain owner, Dann J. Flesher, has been using the my-gofer.org domain name for an actual business unrelated to Sears’ use of the term.
The other domain names were registered at GoDaddy, and Sears claimed that the links on the parking pages there were competitive to its service. It also claimed that the domain name was listed for sale, citing a link to GoDaddy’s “Domain Buy Service”. Of course, this link was just an ad for GoDaddy’s service that helps people buy already registered domain names. It’s impossible to know what the Sears lawyer was thinking, but he either didn’t understand what he saw on the parked page or tried to pull a fast one on the arbitrator.
Diners Club International lost a case for ContactDiners.com. Here again, the complainant pointed to a parked domain name at GoDaddy, which was automatically placed by the registrar. The domain owner said that he had a history of purchasing “contact” domain names and was not targeting Diners Club. He is the registrant of ContactShoppers.com, ContactTourists.com, and ContactGolfers.com. But Diners Club didn’t get past the first UDRP requirement, as the panel found the domain name was not confusingly similar to its trademark for “Diners”.
Rob Sequin says
Add Sears and Diners Club to the UDRP wall of shame.
Maybe someday the marketing folks will talk to the legal folks and stop these frivolous claims because they make the companies look stupid.
You should send this article to their press department and marketing contact and ask for their opinion.
That way, at least they know what stupid things are going on over in the legal department.
Big SHAME goes out to Sears and Diner’s Club.
This will live on forever in the search engines now.