Tigers score domain name in cybersquatting challenge.
The Clemson Tigers are having another great year on the football field, and now they have an off-field victory as well. This win took place at World Intellectual Property Organization.
Clemson University has won a cybersquatting dispute under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) for the domain name ClemsonUniversity(.)org. With the victory, Clemson will get the domain name in about 10 days.
Interestingly, Clemson doesn’t own ClemsonUniversity(.)com but hasn’t filed a cybersquatting complaint against that domain.
Both domains should concern the university. When I visited ClemsonUniversity(.)org today, Norton blocked my visit saying that it had the RIG Exploit Kit. The domain currently points to the Above.com nameservers, which means it’s pointing somewhere else from there and is likely serving zero-click ads that forward to various destinations.
ClemsonUniversity(.)com also resolves to zero-click, which means visitors are sometimes exposed to scammy websites. When I visited this morning, it tried to install a Google Chrome extension.
Richard Morris says
While I haven’t had time to market BetheTiger™.com to Clemson, I suppose they might like to own it…..either Clemson, LSU or possibly Tiger Woods/Nike may have an interest as well.
thelegendaryjp says
Don’t forget Tony the Tiger, heard he spends huge on dot com.
C.S. Watch says
The offer for public sale in the WHOIS is the nail in the coffin, and the domain is rightly transferred. But…the decision sort of lumps in pay-per-click as a misdeed. It found that, “The aim will have been to generate commercial gain from any pay-per-click revenue derived from the advertising links featured on the Respondent’s parking page.” But all media contains ads, and the UDRP is not empowered to settle trademark infringement.
The site history shows that in 2018 the site resolved to a comparative site, collegeinspector.com, which is content-heavy. Plenty of Indeed.com affiliate links, but it does say ‘College Inspector’ at the top. And at the bottom:
“This website is not affiliated with Clemson University science classes or freshman orientation, and all trademarks are exclusive property of the respective owners. College Inspector is the work of a group of Thai students in Bangkok, using info from the US Department of Education, Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).”
The use of the exact trademark in the domain name of a comparative site is a protected use, according to the Congressional Record of the ACPA. One would think that the kid built the site after the 2016 C&D from them, but no, it was up in 2015. And it appears that he didn’t offer to sell it to them when they contacted him in 2016.
Anyway, the decision could better have hewed to his WHOIS public sale notation in handing over the name. The endless trademark attorneys paid to run around like the ‘Knights Who Say Nih’ are already enjoying rein well beyond the letter and intent of the law.
Michael Deutsch says
Perhaps surprisingly, Princeton Tigers is not a trademark, as there are many high schools in towns named Princeton whose athletic teams have Tigers as mascots. Princeton, New Jersey is one of them. PrincetonTigers.com is For Sale.