Company seemingly targets bank with domain name and loses it in a UDRP.
You buy a domain name for $175,000. It’s a geo domain name, but it also matches a famous trademark.
Do you a) make sure to only use it in the geo sense or b) antagonize the trademark holder?
The company that bought Halifax.com did the latter, and it cost them the domain name in a UDRP. This story was the fifth most-read on Domain Name Wire this year.
After buying the domain name, Diversity Network registered similar domain names that seemed to target Bank of Scotland’s financial services company Halifax. It also created a financial site on Halifax.com.
According to the UDRP, Diversity Network also reached out to Bank of Scotland and told them about lots of misdirected email it received, including for lost logins. It offered to sell the domain name to the bank.
This was enough for the UDRP panel to order the valuable domain name transferred to the Bank of Scotland.
John says
wwtt
Paolo says
Well, the owner of Halifax.com did the possibile to try to lose the domain name…
todd says
This has to be the #1 biggest f@%k up in domaining history. How do you tell your partners you just lost 175k because of stupidity.
C. S. Watch says
How can anyone be so unbelievably slow on the uptake. And such an elegant word, now frittered away on a sub-brand.
Heads up, lice:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us…
Although…no treasure is ever utterly devoid of branding vulnerabilities:
‘Halifax is believed to be a descendant of Old English hāliġfeax (literally “holy hair”). The town is said to have received the name from the fact that the hair of a murdered virgin was hung up on a tree in the neighborhood, which became a resort of pilgrims.’
GeoYP says
Where to check if my domain has UDRP issue or not?