Benefit of the doubt given to complainants in .co cases.
Companies have filed 51 UDRPs against .co domain names since the relaunch of .co into an international domain name extension over the summer. They haven’t lost yet.
Complainants are 25-0 in cases that have been decided, and further settled seven cases prior to having them heard by World Intellectual Property Organization panelists.
In most cases the domain at issue is an exact match to a famous brand such as aolmail.co and cointreau.co. But the benefit of the doubt is afforded to complainants, such as in the case of TGV.co. The complainant merely pointed to a parked page offering the three letter domain name for sale as evidence. And the respondent in HGTV.co didn’t even bother to respond.
If you registered a generic or acronym .co domain name for good intentions, be sure you aren’t parking it. It’s an easy way to lose the domain name.
chris says
do you happen to have a list of what .co domains had UDRP’s filed against them?
i am curious to see how many from this list are actually copyrighted – and a no brainer as to NOT register. I’d also want to see the generic .co’s
Andrew Allemann says
@ Chris – here’s the link
Barry Lebovitz says
Who is Isaac Goldstein, and why do I see him everywhere?
Rob Sequin says
I guess lawyers get paid more to be reactive rather than proactive.
They should have protected their clients from TM infringement but they make more money chasing cybersquatters.
Yaron says
Not very surprising if youre asking me.
Brad says
As I predicted before launch, one of big winners of the .CO extension is lawyers.
Brad
Zorlock says
Well, if you where stupid enough to register a trademark and either sit it or try to develop it as the same type of site then you get what you sew.
At least make a little effort and try to develop it into something completely different then the original owner.
But you do bring up a good point… We need to develop our domains, even if they generic.
Cheers