Domino’s pizza has filed a UDRP to gain control of the new gTLD domain name Dominos .Pizza.
For me its another huge brand failure to protect a brand, on a bang on new gTLD domain.
Last week we saw what happened when Bloomberg allowed a third party to register Bloomberg.Market by failing to register the domain name in Sunrise which led to a huge swing in the price of Twitter when a story on that faked Bloomberg site caused shares to rise as much as 8%.
As we have chatted about before while I can understand that a trademark holder doesn’t want or need to register every domain extension out there, they do have a responsibility I believe to purchase those right in the wheelhouse to protect not only themselves but consumers, internet users, customers and as we saw last week sometimes stock investors and traders.
Domino’s does need a .lawyer or .attorney domain nor a .top or .flowers or hundreds of other but Dominos.pizza?
Really guys?
Lets not forget that Dior which is in the fashion business selling clothing, purses, shoes and the rest passed on registering Dior.Clothing only to file a UDRP to get the domain that they could have registered in Sunrise.
Another clothing designer Perry Ellis filed a UDRP today on PerryEllis.NYC
Duh
Last week Wynn one of the largest gambling companies in the world and with several properties in Las Vegas filed a UDRP to gain control of the domain name Wynn.Vegas.
Really?
No one at Wynn thought they needed to register that domain in the .domain name Wynn.Vegas in Sunrise?
Did they really think no one would step up and spend $20 or so to register Wynn.Vegas?
Well someone in Bangkok did and they are the proud owner.
Last week Porsche filed a URS (Uniform Rapid Suspension) on the domain Porsche.Design which isn’t just a name its a brand the company uses to sell products like watches shoes and other items which you can find at porsche-design.us, .porsche-design.com, porschedesign.com. Since they filed a URS instead of a UDRP if they will all they do is get the domain name suspended for the life of the registration and then it drops and becomes available again to be registered.
No Porsche didn’t need to register Porsche.plumbing or Porsche.lawyer or hundred of other extensions either but they sure better register Porsche.car, .cars .auto and .autos and the Geo’s where they sell cars.
While no one likes a cybersquatter, brands have a role to play in the cybersquatting ecosystem,.
Brands have the first right to register their domain names in every new gTLD extension.
Brands better get a lot smarter about it, sooner than later.
I agree Michael, there seems to be dysfunction at the management left and also from the sections and employees in charge of securing their intellectual property. It’s obvious that the new gTLDs have caught many companies off guard and they are going about this approach in reverse.
As far as Porsche goes, it seems as if they don’t have any IT staff department and their lawyers just failed by filing a URS. Maybe you should have them put you on retainer? 🙂
Obviously a self-interested comment but I think the much more elegant and interesting porsche.design is far superior to a .com or .us name with a hyphen. A missed opportunity, for sure, but maybe they’ll get it by next year?!
My opinion is if you are the owner of a Trade Mark and have the Trade Mark .com registered. Any Gtld should be blocked and not be able to be registered.[Period] Just like they hold and block the gem-like Generic keywords for themselves to sell later.. To me this should be illegal. Anybody i think with lots of money can and should apply for a Gtld. you would atleast double your money on this trademark protection scheme. For a business your being forced to spend $.
So you would have Amazon blocked so only the company would have access irrespective of anyone else perhaps having legitimate rights in the word?
A trademark does not grant exclusive rights to a words usage, it provides protection from competition within a specific area as well as potential misuse.
However, even then it is reliant on the possibility of confusion in the marketplace.
There have been instances of direct competitors in the same marketplace using the others trademark without restriction because it was ruled that consumers would not be confused by the use.
that’s why Amazon lost .Amazon ( on their first attempt ) .. Amazon (as ), the jungle and region came before the company …
I’m sure dominos pizza had ample amount of time to register during trademark and sunrise period. Hope they don’t get the UDRP.
There’s a company lovemoney.com
Does this mean they have the rights to love.money.
Same with lil Wayne’s youngmoney.com and young.money
This will cause a lot of problems if so.
Why should brands care if people never type the address in to the URL bar?
If it is not in human consciousness, it does not exist, there is no IP to protect.
There is no innovation in the gTLD space, it is a dud.
Look at Bitcoin, there is bitcoin, litecoin … and then what?
Unless there is new innovation, then there is no reason to adopt, use, or waste precious resources worrying about.
It is a cash grab for lawyers, sure. Go push that down everyone’s throat.
Alternative domain names are low on Domino’s list of things to worry about. It’s all about Dominos.com, which generates $2 billion in sales per year and growing. Driving traffic to Dominos.com is their sole focus. The UDRP on dominos.pizza is merely a defensive measure belatedly led by their law firm. They have every right to it — the trademark term “Dominos” is left of the dot. I just doubt they have any strategic need for it while they’ve got the Dominos.com juggernaut going.
Big brands are a flat out failure in registering their trademark domains ..even in .com extension they are just out to lunch. And because they fail to protect their trademark. Then hire ip attorneys they all must be taught a lesson the hard way. Register the mark and then put up a negative blog. There is nothing the can do. a blog is a legitimate interest and nullifies the UDRP. And the mark holder goes to school. I have done this and a billion dollar entity is loosing type in traffic. They hired an ip attorney I then cut their balls off with a legal response. these brands are going to fall in line period and learn the value of a domain the hard way. Just like the iRS make a few high profile examples and the rest fall right in line at a cost of 10,00 a yr for registration.
For several years when typing Dominos pizza in Youtube, the no. 1 video was one called Dirty dirty Dominos pizza (about how an employee was caught on camera putting cheese up his nose before putting it on clients’ pizzas). So no wonder that they missed out on Dominos.pizza, if they put a blind eye to what happens online.
The scandal cost them Millions of USD, so it seems non-excusable that they still don’t have an action plan for online brand protection.
Anon
See Bloomberg.market from last week a lot of bad can happen from allowing a domain like dominos.pizza out in the wild
Some guy puts up a site that looks like Dominos and a phone number and then goes to people house who think they are going to get a pizza and instead get a gun to their face and robbed.
Its not the safest world we live in.
They need to get smarter its more than just losing traffic to a site or defensive registrations
thanks for sharing. great point.
i would go as far as saying that many of these, off-guard caught brands, will get smart by quietly buying it
off from ‘squatters’ just so a handful of managers and other delusional job-titles the corporate world likes to invent, will keep their jobs … covering the error.
hence, those (big) brands, by not exercising their right of 1st registration are actually motivating ( not to say sponsoring ) ‘squatters’, and then when the consumer gets scammed, who’s to blame ? their role is too to protect the consumer, and not only their profit. the number of south american brands doing this is appalling.
giving ICANN’s earning on all those contention sets, perhaps the Registrar should split the ICANN fee with the Registry, and use it to promote awareness.
Michael
I hear you.
I am just saying these kinds of low probability “what if” scenarios are lower on the priority list of myriad items involved with just running the business.
Just because we think about domain names all day doesn’t mean operators of real companies and businesses think about domain names all day. We are more likely to (over?) assign importance to a domain name than they are.
Domino’s registering by hand or by UDRP the domain name Dominos.Pizza will still be a defensive, non-strategic registration of a domain name whether it’s to protect the mark or to mitigate against misuse by a nefarious cybersquatter. It’s a mitigation registration, not a strategic, business-driving registration. At most, they will likely forward Dominos.Pizza to Dominos.com to capture the five to ten consumers per day who happen to errantly stick a dot between dominos and pizza when trying to do a Google search in their browser bar. They may also capture two or three domainers who are just checking out the domain name out of curiosity each day as well. Beyond that, it remains to be seen if Domino’s will ever use Dominos.Pizza to add real value to its business over and above what Dominos.com is already doing for it today.
‘registering via urdp’ …. seriously ?
granted it may be a bit technical, but that is exactly why bags of money are thrown to Marketing and IT ..
there is absolutely no excuse for a big brand or company to be unaware. if that is the case,
then let’s stop spending with consulting, digital marketing, forget about landrushes … release all strings at once, right now and let the ‘urdp registration’ balance it out ..
Domain Name: pizzahut.pizza
Domain ID: 1e8cef74fe5841c6a5ae74c3e8c84fbd-D
WHOIS Server: http://whois.register.com
Referral URL: http://www.register.com
Updated Date: 2014-12-12T17:02:36Z
Creation Date: 2014-12-07T17:01:48Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2015-12-07T17:01:48Z
Sponsoring Registrar: Register.com
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 9
Domain Status: ok https://www.icann.org/epp#ok
Registrant ID: grusqnjulnntcb5u
Registrant Name: christina ramirez
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: 2849 east clifton ct
Registrant City: gilbert
Registrant State/Province: AZ
Registrant Postal Code: 85295
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.7142696774
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: christinaramirez@cox.net
Domain Name: papajohns.pizza
Domain ID: c9944b126c7e4630b5556de7b260f75a-D
WHOIS Server: http://whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
Updated Date: 2015-01-20T13:48:10Z
Creation Date: 2014-12-07T17:01:00Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2015-12-07T17:01:00Z
Sponsoring Registrar: Network Solutions, LLC
Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 2
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Registrant ID: shufg6ibhepjvnlc
Registrant Name: panzerotto pizza panzerotto pizza
Registrant Organization: panzerotto pizza
Registrant Street: 650 Jamieson Pkwy
Registrant City: Cambridge
Registrant State/Province: ON
Registrant Postal Code: N3C0A5
Registrant Country: CA
Registrant Phone: +1.5195910535
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: joes@idirect.com