Lawyer lets you offload your trademark-infringing domain names.
About five years ago I was talking to a domainer who had some trademark-infringing domains in his portfolio. He didn’t want them. He just wanted to get rid of them.
“What if there was a service where you could push your infringing domains to and they’d take care of it?” he asked. “You just transfer your domains and they put up a notice on the domain that the trademark owner can claim their domain at no charge.”
It was an interesting idea. Especially since it’s not always easy to merely delete a registration.
It turns out there is an attorney that will do that for you.
And the way I found out about it will be humorous to domainers.
I was reading about the new gTLD trademark clearinghouse today. The official web site for the clearinghouse is Trademark-Clearinghouse.com. (I know, a hyphen. Right?)
So naturally I wanted to figure out who owned the better domain TrademarkClearinghouse.com.
It’s owned by Louisiana attorney David Nance. Nance was formerly in-house counsel to DirectNIC and Parked.
Nance offers a service for people who think they own an potentially infringing domain name:
If you suspect that one or more of your domain names may violate someone else’s trademark or service mark, you can avoid risk while your domain dispute is being resolved by following these 2 simple steps:
1. Forward your domain name to http://www.trademarkclearinghouse.com
2. Change the REGISTRANT of the domain(s) to TM Clearing House, LLC
Of course, Nance would like you to use his services to defend the name (if that’s warranted.)
If you want nothing at all to do with the domain, you can go a step further:
But if you do not want to try to keep your domain name, simply email us to arrange to have the domain name transferred to one of our registrar accounts and we will deal with anyone claiming prior rights. If we are eventually successful in the mark infringement dispute, you have the option to recover the domain name for $1000.00.
Adam says
Deleting names is tough ! psh ! come on.
I doubt for most that the real issue is difficulty with physically deleting them. I think it’s more about the mental anguish 🙂 of sending a name back in to the wild or losing that easy revenue. If you delete it someone else will just pick it up anyway right ?
If you are concerned, why not put up a lander inviting the appropriate party to contact you so you can give them the name ? Do you need to hide behind a lawyers landing page if you are doing it this way ?
C. J. Dvorak says
ICANN may consider taking a few million of the recently acquired war chest of 350 million- and purchase these domains:
TrademarkClearinghouse.com
(and)
IPCLEARINGHOUSE.COM
Ipclearinghouse is the name of the actual registry. (go to ipclearinghouse.net, ipclearinghouse.org, or ipclearinghouse.co and you will get it.
J says
I agree with Adam, which registrar makes it hard to delete a name? None I’ve ever used.
I think the only reason anyone would ever want to do this is if there is a current legal action involving the domain. In that case costs to defend it could outpace the value of the name. $1,000 to shield yourself from litigation and you only pay if they successfully defend the name… actually that sounds like a bargain.
jayjay says
@J @Adam TRUE~! 🙂
Every decent register has a termination button or be it a Request Deletion feature indeed.
Doing the right thing in the first place, ie not registering or acquiring typos/trademarks avoids the use of such a feature and saves burning a hole in your wallet.
ipico says
“ipclearinghouse” is going to have many applications in the future. Not just with domains (trademarks). If I were ICANN id get the name before it is locked up. This name (term) will ultimately be worth 10s of millions. Just look at the overall intellectual property/patents field. IP is the name of the game.