Its quite amazing to me when I see a bang on trademark infringing domain allowed to be owned and monetized by someone other than the trademark owner.
I’m not talking about typos, misspells or terms that include the trademark but is a reach based on the business of the domain holder.
I’m talking about a domain like GettyImage.com which is right up Getty’s business which sells stock photos or images.
Its pretty amazing to think that Getty allowed someone to hold on to the domain name Gettyimage.com for some 12 years but that’s exactly what happened until Getty recently bought and one a UDRP on the domain name Gettyimage.com
The registration date of the domain is July 11, 2001.
Yes almost 12 years ago.
So not shocking that the domain holder didn’t even bother filing a response to the UDRP that was decided this week and returned the domain to the trademark holder.
The domain has an Alexa ranking of 1.2 Million which means the domain get and has gotten plenty of traffic over the years.
I’m sure the domain holder was very happy taking the thousands of dollars they made over the years and calling it a day.
Likewise it took General Motors.com 9 years to go after the domain name Corvette-Stingray.com a domain that was registered back on April 9, 2004.
That domain was awarded to GM this week as well in another UDRP that went unresponded to by the domain holder
The fact remains that bang on trademark terms drop everyday and the only one’s not playing the drop game seem to be the trademark holders themselves.
While trademark groups continue to battle the new gTLD’s which are highly unlikely to have any meaningful traffic for years they allow bang on .com’s to exist even drop without attempting to register them for $10 or $25 or $100.
I continue to see many of these type of domain names dropping every week.
Fortunately a lot of them are going unregistered but we are tracking them.
Here are just a few that got dropped
As you can see they are bang on terms, right in the wheelhouse of the business of the trademark holder and none of them seem to have been acquired by the trademark holder.
You may see UDRP’s in future years for some of these but the acquisition costs for the TM holder will be in the thousands not in the tens or even hundreds of dollars
