Shipping Company Loses Challenge for NOL.com Domain Name
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Domain name with Fortune 500 history involved in domain dispute.
Shipping company Neptune Orient Lines Limited has lost a UDRP challenge against the owner of the domain name NOL.com.
The domain’s owner, cnwonder.com or Wu Guiqiang, said he didn’t register the domain name with the shipping company’s NOL trademark in mind. He also used the domain name for a service called “Names Online”, or NOL for short.
The panelist accepted that the domain name wasn’t registered and used in bad faith, and that the owner had rights or legitimate interests in the name.
What makes this case more interesting is the history of the domain name. It was previously owned by Sprint Nextel and registered at Mark Monitor. In the dispute, the respondent claimed he registered the domain name on March 14, 2009. Indeed, the domain name transferred to his control and to a different domain name registrar (Answerable) around that date. But the domain name didn’t expire. It’s possible that Sprint sold the domain name to the respondent, (turns out it did expire. The expiration date I saw was the registry date in whois. It was sold in an expired domain name auction for $26,000 in 2009). but I find it strange that he wouldn’t have brought this up in his response. If Sprint owned it for some legitimate purpose (Nextel OnLine?), and he acquired it from Sprint, that would seem to be a good defense.
Further Reading:
- Max Levchin’s Slide Loses Domain Name Challenge
- Hershey Gets Twizzled and Loses Twizzler.com Domain Challenge
- French tech conference LeWeb loses challenge for LeWeb.com domain name
Tags: udrp
I guess we can also add Neptune Orient Lines Limited to the ever-increasing list of wannabe domain thieves.
And archive shows it was originally owned by a company called “Nashville Online”; before it was apparently sold to Nextel in 1999/2000.
It is the cheapest way to take over a three letter domain name, if you search it you will find that each 3 letter domain is the abbreviation to at least 1000 business world wide
“If Sprint owned it for some legitimate purpose (Nextel OnLine?), and he acquired it from Sprint, that would seem to be a good defense.”
But why would this be relevant? New owner = new registration for the purposes of UDRP (??).
Nextel let the domain name expire and was in snapname auction , SOLD @ 26k
i was the 2nd high bidder, Wu Guiqiang won the auction.
@ amr – thanks for the info. When I looked at the historical it showed that the domain didn’t expire until 2010, but not I realize that was the registry auto-renewing.
@ Nic – it would prove other uses for the term. Not sure many panelists would bite, but worth a try.
“@ Nic – it would prove other uses for the term. Not sure many panelists would bite, but worth a try.”
OK, good point.
This blog’s recent emphasis on UDRP decisions is great. I appreciate the work and contribution.
Good news!
I’m a member of nol.com.
@ admindomain.com – that would have been another thing I’d share with the panelists — # of registered members. That said, I’m well aware that the panelist doesn’t usually right ALL of the arguments made by each side, so it’s possible they made that argument.
I worked in NOL IT at the time, and was involved in this supreme bit of stupidity on NOL’s part.
For years, NOL tried to get Sprint to sell the name. It even authorized more than $50,000 or so to do it. Sprint was using it simply as a redirect for nextelonline.com, and then not even for that.
Sprint was unresponsive, probably due to their own internal disfunction.
We tagged the expiry date for the URL, and hired a company to pounce on it if it was renewed or went up for auction.
However, NOL then decided to lay off most of it’s IT staff in the US and hire cheaper IT labor in India, China, Singapore, etc. It also mismanaged the tracking company.
So this fell through the cracks. The URL expired and went to auction. A helpful Singaporean even called to tell NOL about the auction and urged us to bid so a Singaporean company could have it.
Rather than thanking him, we accused him of a scam!
So NOL lost it’s opportunity to get the URL at a bargain price. And it challenged the ownership because it arrogantly thought it deserved the name without any effot to legally acquiring it.
Congratulations cnwonder.com. And a lesson learned, NOL. When you hire substandard IT employees, it costs you more in the long run.