Virgin Group founder challenges registration of .xxx domain name.
When ICM Registry released .xxx domain names to the public last month, Richard Branson must have been busy yachting.
Australian Sean Truman beat him to the domain name, registering RichardBranson.xxx on December 10. That was four days after .xxx was opened up to registration.
Now Branson of Virgin Group fame wants his name back. He filed a complaint with National Arbitration Forum today.
It looks like some other big name wealthy entrepreneurs may have missed the boat, too. BillGates.xxx was registered to a Florida company. LarryEllison.xxx and MichaelDell.xxx were both registered to people using a whois privacy service.
What these registrants were thinking is beyond me. It’s not like one of these guys is going to pay through the nose to get their .xxx domain name; all they have to do is file an inexpensive arbitration case.
@Domains says
Now that Richard Branson has done it, and word gets around, we’ll probably see many more celebrities do the same.
George Kirikos says
More evidence that new TLDs are a bad idea. Of course, ICANN repeats the mantra that they have “no new data”, even though we’ve seen another failure, namely .xxx. The public interest would be best served by *removing* TLDs from the root, e.g. eliminate .info, .biz, .xxx, .travel, .pro, .asia, .jobs, .tel and .mobi. If they were phased out over 5 years, the jeers towards ICANN would be replaced by cheers.
John Berryhill says
Was this filed as a UDRP? The ICM Charter Dispute Policy has a provision directly relating to personal names.
Andrew Allemann says
@ John Berryhill – the ruleset listed at NAF is UDRP.
DotCom says
More TLDs just seem to = more lawyer fees. I don’t see how consumers will even know or benefit from the creation of even more TLDs. Dot info has had years and years to become relevant. It’s main purpose? SEO content farming websites that have no actual brand other than keyword-keyword.info … ICANN Has cheeseburger.
Domain Name Newsletter says
I wonder if he is annoyed as all the businesses that had ‘virgin’ in their title that have had to close down in the past ?
Perry says
Any news from the first wave of .xxx Sunrise AD auctions that just finished? We are now in our second weeks auctions.
Seem strange no news at all from anyone.
Is everyone keeping quiet as they are still in current auctions and upcoming auctions.