Green Bay Packers fail to take down fan site TotalPackers.com

Football team said domain name constitutes cybersquatting.

The Green Bay Packers NFL team has failed in its attempt to take over the TotalPackers.com domain name through a cybersquatting claim. The National Football League team filed the UDRP case with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

TotalPackers.com is a fan site with news and analysis of the team. According to the owner, it received about one million visits last year, nearly of third of which were type-ins.

The timing of the Packers’ cybersquatting complaint is curious because the team has been in contact with the site’s owner for a couple of years regarding various issues. The owner thinks that the team decided to file the cybersquatting complaint because TotalPackers.com added a section of the site about women that the team didn’t like.

A three-person WIPO panel determined that the site’s owner had a legitimate interest or rights in the domain name based on his continuous use.

The only remedy under UDRP is to transfer the domain name. In other words, had the owner of TotalPackers.com lost, he would have had to change domain names.