News network wants Spanish domain name.
Cable News Network, aka CNN, wants to get its hands on the CNN.es domain name. There’s just one problem: it was registered back in 2005. So the company has filed a domain dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization to try to get the domain name.
At the time of writing CNN.es doesn’t resolve to a web site. But the domain’s owner appears to be based in the United Kingdom if his email address is any any indication. (.Es is the country code for Spain.)
This isn’t the first time CNN has challenged domain names through domain arbitration. It filed 8 cases last decade, winning all 8 of them. However, this appears to be the first challenge the company has made for a second level domain name merely containing “CNN” in a country code domain.
CNN knows the value of a good domain name, even if belatedly. In 2008 the company ponied up $700,000 for the domain name iReport.com. CNN had made the iReport brand valuable thanks to its crowdsourced news program by the same name.
Domain says
Cnn.es is a nice spanish acronym.
How much cost them?
DomainersChoice.com says
I hope CNN does not win this battle, this would be completely unfair.
mywebsearches says
I hate to see this big company trying to get everything just because they feel like.
CNN = Could mean many many things. Why cnn.com thinks is their right to own cnn.es.
David Taylor says
Just because an individual has a domain name and a company wishes to have that domain name does not make it “unfair” on the registrant. You have to look at all of the facts. If the registrant is using the domain name for a fair activity and has a legitimate interest in the domain name then they will not lose the domain name to CNN, even if CNN is a big company and even if it has a registered trade mark “CNN”.
CNN could indeed mean many things, and provided the domain name was registered with something other than the company CNN in mind, and this can be substantiated, then the registrant should be fine. But if the registrant thought, ah CNN.ES is available, and that big company CNN will pay me lots of money for it so I will register it… then this is just a form of hopeful extortion and the registrant may have an uphill battle.
The fact that the domain name here is not being used is always a shame as that is just dead space on the Internet when it could be used by someone.
Jim Davies says
David
I agree with quite a bit of your post.
However you write that “provided the domain name was registered with something other than the company CNN in mind, and this can be substantiated, then the registrant should be fine.”
But surely it is not required that the registrant has to prove good faith intent; rather that the complainant has to prove bad faith intent?
Nic S says
They have owned cnn.com.es for years, but there is no archive record of it ever being used.
Do they even broadcast in Spain?