Company files complaint over seven domain names that forward to mobile porn site.
If you really want to piss off a large company, just put some porn up on domain names that include its brands.
Apple has just filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Forum over seven domain names that include the term “iPhone” and forward to a mobile porn service.
The seven domains (NSFW):
iphonecamforce.com
iphonecam4s.com
iphoneporn4s.com
iphonesex4s.com
iphonexxxforce.com
iphone4s.com
porn4iphones.com
I suspect the iPhone4s.com domain name is particularly troubling to Apple given that unsuspecting internet surfers are likely to type that in.
And really, you have to ask yourself why Apple didn’t proactively get that domain name before releasing the product. It was registered in August 2008, so someone else had the foresight to follow Apple’s naming conventions.
All of the domain names are using Moniker’s privacy service to shield their whois records.
The name-grabbers could’ve protected themselves by making the web sites “phone for sex”-oriented sites and registering many variations of the name, such as
iphone4s.com
iphone4sex.com
iphone4sx.com
ifone4s.com
etc.
Then registering trademarks for the names under the “use” of sexually-oriented-businesses in at least one country. This would at least delay the game long enough that Apple would either have to go without using the names for several more months or offer to buy them out.
Good to see Apple going full force on this. The scumbag that pointed the domain to porn will get what he deserves. We don’t need more Zuccarini copycats.
Just goes to show you that it is not that simple to just take a domain name. It’s your property. They must prove they have a case and get some sort of legal ruling. Many times it is hard to prove, or at least convince someone that the other person may or may not have a good reason for owning the domain name.
iPhone = trademark. What ups the ante is the use with porn content.
I think that some of these would be defensible, Acro.
porn4iphones.com, for example, could be nominative fair use. You can use a trademark, belonging to another, in your domain name. You simply must do so the right way. I don’t know how they were using the domains, so I can’t comment on this particular case. But, it isn’t as simple as “trademark in the domain name = loss”