Arizona company loses domain name dispute over SchoolWebmaster.com.
NameMedia, which runs domain name marketplaces Afternic and BuyDomains, has taught the owner of SchoolWebmasters.com a lesson.
ScribeWrite, LLC operates as School Webmasters (schoolwebmasters.com), which provides web site services to schools and teachers. It filed a complaint with National Arbitration Forum in July, asking for it to award the domain name SchoolWebmaster.com (singular) to it.
NameMedia acquired SchoolWebmaster.com in 2006 after it expired. This was months before ScribeWrite even started using “School Webmaster” as a mark in commerce according to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records.
Nevertheless, ScribeWrite didn’t want to to pay much for the domain name. It sent a cease and desist letter to NameMedia demanding the domain name for $800.
When that failed it paid $1,000+ to hire a lawyer and file a UDRP.
The UDRP panelist found the domain name wasn’t registered in bad faith and that NameMedia has rights and legitimate interests in the domain — one of hundreds it owns that combine a generic term with “webmaster”.
NameMedia’s current asking price for SchoolWebmaster.com? Just $3,088. A little negotiation could get that down to $2,000 or $2,500. So I’m confused by ScribeWrite’s approach to getting the domain.
they probably need to hire some college webmaster for negotiation 😀
Dumb-ass egos getting in the way, instead of using good business sense.
Most of the time you probably can blame it on the complainant’s lawyer.
They assure the complainant they have a strong case and why pay an extorbitant amount for a domain that should rightfully be theres anyway.
When they lose, they tell the client you were cheated. And, we should file a infringement case to get the domain from the cybersquatter.
I work with School Webmasters and BuyDomains wouldn’t negotiate. We are a small company serving schools, hiring professional designers/stay-at-home moms. Our margins are very tight. So, when they wouldn’t consider anything less than $3,088 (which might seem like a low price to other companies, like BuyDomains, but is quite high to us), it became a matter of principle. We only needed the name to avoid the ongoing confusion for our clients. The attempt to find fairness was naive. But it is sad that a company who spent $8 for a domain insists on their arbitrary price for a name they can’t use anyway. They spent a lot of money to NOT negotiate on price (more than we did, I’m sure). So, chalk this one up to keeping America’s lawyers employed.
@ Jim – did you try to negotiate after you sent the demand letter?
Jim, I suspect for BuyDomains it’s also the principle. After all, they owned this domain name before you changed your company name to School Webmasters.
May be they wanted to prove a point
1) By and large the public is not educated about the retail market value of domain names. Also, most people think domain names should be close to free*.
(*This includes other domainers who want to buy your names and tech guys from way back.)
2) I think a lot of regular business folk think domaining is a “bad business” full of disreputable people and shady practices.* This makes many of them hesitant to pull the trigger even when it is completely affordable to do so — they don’t want to know their money is going into a domainer’s pocket!
(*You and me know this to be only partially true, but might have a hard time convincing others.)
3. Most businesses rely on lawyers for certain aspects of normal operation and maintenance. In the business world, this integration leads to a working trust of the legal profession even when experience of the law in practice and in discussions with legal professionals should have integrity alarms going off en masse.* Bottom line, many businesses would much rather pay lawyers exorbitant fees than spend any money padding the pockets of what they would likely refer to as “squatters.”
(*Some people even encourage their own children to be lawyers, as frightening as that may seem.)
This is becoming an age old problem with no clear solution.
We tried to negotiate via email, but they responded that they would only take their full asking price. So, no, we didn’t try again. So, now the domain name is probably worthless to anyone else because it was determined that it is confusingly similar to our trademarks. By not negotiating (being greedy, in my humble opinion) it seems they have destroyed the value of this domain for any potential customer anyway–so they hold worthless domain name. And, now it appears they are asking $5000 for it). Go figure.
I have purchased several domains from BuyDomains.com over the years. In each case, BD negociated the price DOWN. Maybe your negociating skills need work? The last domain I bought from them they were asking $3500 and dropped the price $1000. All I did was offer $2000 and they came back with the final price. To date, they have been very easy to work with.
“it seems they have destroyed the value of this domain for any potential customer”
That sounds like wishful thinking.
Jim,
1. I believe NameMedia has internal legal staff for this type of case.
2. Can you afford to defend your TM in U.S. court if challenged? It might be in NameMedia’s best interest to challenge your TM.
3. I wonder if there is another School Webmaster company somewhere else in the world who could purchase this domain?
4. I suspect NameMedia has annual revenues approaching $50 mil. (public sales, NDA sales, ppc, hosting?, etc) Do you think the lost opportunity of $ 3k will bother them?
At this point, you have spent at least $ 2k (or more) and don’t have anything to show for it. If you had spent $ 3k, you would have elliminated corporate confusion and lost traffic.
I also suspect you approached them with an attitude. A little bit of honey would have saved you $1-2 thousand.
the story is funny, sure
but what’s funnier – schoolwebmasters.com received a free backlink from domainnamewire.com which has domain trust flow 44 and domain citation flow 55 according to majestic 🙂