Feb 14 2008
What’s In A Name? Enough For Corporate America To Take Action
There is alot of buzz that 2008 will be the rise of corporate America taking action on domain owners. While some will focus on obvious trademark violations, others will once again attempt reverse domain-name hijacking on generic domains. And corporate America will become successful at securing some of these precious gems thru the court system. You can forget about WIPO being used, as lawyers are becoming creative and using the justice system to drain revenue from the owners until they fold, if indeed they do.
Rick Schwartz blogged a little on this today and has in the past as well. Additionally, I predicted that 2008 would be the rise of domainer lawsuits and the rise of domain insurance in a post. This is scary stuff for domain owners in general, especially when you look at how powerful domains are becoming and turning into large media companies with large amounts of revenue overnight.
Geo domains will be on many of the top media companies radar once again, and they will attempt to drain every penny of profit you have earned from your geo domain as you protect your rights thru the legal system. They are the biggest threat to Traditional Media’s profit and existence. Will it happen?
This could put any domainer at risk that owns a portfolio if they are attacked on many fronts from corporate America attempting reverse domain-name hijacking thru the court system. It is very expensive to protect names using the court sytem for any domainer.
Again, will it happen in 2008? I think the trend has been reborn and has already started to take momentum. It will only be a matter of time before someone you know is affected, I only hope it is none of us!
In the article from computerworld.com, two companies battle it out for the domain onephone.com.
How can we unite to prevent this from occuring?
HI Steve
You cant beat them.
you can join them and take your battle on line but its a loosing battle.
After fighting my own domain battle which has been going on for the last 4 years.
Can tell you in Scotland the legal system is Bent its worse than a Uri Geller spoon.
if they want your name they will just force it through court as in Scotland the Lawyers judges are all members of the one club.
and money talks.
and with names becoming more valuable lawyers see this as an easy gravy train.
Parked pages with google addwords will loose you your name.
all firm has to do is advertise with google or yahoo the lawyer then takes a screen shot of your site with the firm he represents
and bingo you have lost the name.
its so simple even in the UK with names becoming very valuable
this has already happened and for cost of £850 you could try lay claim to a name worth £50.000.