ESPN Wants ESPN3d.com Domain Name For New 3D Network
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010
Sports network asks arbitration panel to give it domain name for new 3D network.
Sports network ESPN has filed a complaint with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name ESPN3d.com.
The company announced its new ESPN 3D network in January, saying that it would show 85 sporting events in 3D during its first year. The 3D broadcasting kicked off this month with matches from the World Cup, but the network still doesn’t have the ESPN3D.com domain name.
It turns out that Los Angeles company Ideal Entertainment registered the domain name back in 2006. It used GoDaddy’s Domains by Proxy service to shield its identity. But with the filing of the UDRP, the proxy service removed the whois mask.
This will be an easy decision for the arbitration panel. But I’ve got to wonder, why did the company wait until the June launch of the network to go after the domain rather than taking care of it when it decided to launch the network?
Oh, nevermind. That would require prioritizing domain names in the product lifecycle — something few companies do.
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Tags: espn 3d
ESPN is a smart company when it comes to branding and domain names. From their locally branded sites (e.g. ESPNDallas.com) to use of the domain name ES.PN (http://es.pn) for its custom URL shortening, ESPN gets it.
most companies do not prioritize domain names like the domain king stated many buyers think months before even contacting the domain owner.in addition the current domain owner could have easily punished espn
for their laze fair attitude towards domain names. the domain owner could have just listed sports scores and sport news and completely cut espn out of the domain name.
scores and news is a legal use for a trademark…as i stated before a tradeamark has little value when up against a sharp domainer…
domain guy, If the current domain owner had followed your advice (put up sports scores and news), the only person he’d be punishing is himself. I’m afraid if you can’t see that, you’re in the wrong business.
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“a tradeamark has little value when up against a sharp domainer”
Newbies – do not believe this. If you think you are smarter than Disney (or any other major corp.), you will lose more than just the domain.
Interesting to see that the .net, .org, .info, and .us are also all registered.
Won’t be surprised if some folks thought that. Only to be overridden by others who don’t think so, yet are in a stronger position to decide how they’ll do things.