Ancestry.com files four domain disputes.
In its SEC filing to go public, Ancestry.com warned that it may have difficulty protecting its brand in domain names.
The company just took its first step to protecting its name by filing four separate arbitration requests for domain names with World Intellectual Property Organization. It seems that the company filed four “low hanging fruit” cases to establish a precedent.
The no-brainer is wwwancestry.com, which you have to wonder why the company waited to go after until it filed to go public. It is also seeking to get ancestray.com, ancestrys.com, ancestry1.com, 1ancestory.com, and ancestory1.com.
Although fighting for typos of its domain names probably won’t be difficult, its bigger challenge will be securing the domain name ‘ancestry.tld’ in country code domains and new top level domain names, should it choose to do so. The company identified country code domain names as a major challenge in its SEC filing.
Ancestry is generic and any typos of it are also generic.
I think as long as stuff like ancestry1.com isn’t showing ppc ads they should be alright (depending on panelist). In real life there are tons of companies that simply append a letter or number to the end of a generic term then trade under that name. Even PPC should be fine, but sketcher in UDRP
JP – good point. I can register business1.com without infringing on business.com. In fact, Business2.com was the web address for Business 2.0 the magazine.
The way I see it, wwwancestry.com is the only domain they truly have a claim on since it’s a clear typo of their domain name (including tld), not because it’s a typo of the word ancestry.
They have no legitimate claim on the others unless they are using it in an infringing manner.
ancestray.com & ancestrys.com go to the same page which is basically a mini-site whose results simply show adsense with the top advertiser being you know who.
ancestry1.com is a parked page which top advertiser is again, ancestry.com
The others aren’t resolving so what exactly is the claim there?
Ancestry ????