Domains used to warn others that Chanel will pursue them.
French fashion house Chanel has aggressively pursued counterfeiters and cybersquatters over the year.
But what it does with many of the names it recovers is rather unique: it sends a warning to would-be counterfeiters and customers of counterfeit goods.
Michele Neylon discovered one such example today.
Here’s an example of one of the sites it took over:
Chanel’s message warns counterfeiters that the company will go after them and also urges consumers not to buy fake goods.
The company doesn’t use the same template for each site or domain it takes over. Sometimes it creates a custom site specific to the exact online store it shut down.
One for alleghanymoonvarietystore.com is particularly detailed. It shows the judgment against the store operators and has tabs for “what was here” and “what happened”.
I think this is a good strategy for the company to take for domain names that it can’t otherwise use for its business. In some cases the domain is put to use redirect to a Chanel site. For example, Chanel won a UDRP for insidechanel.com earlier this year. It now forwards to inside.chanel.com.
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