Recent Posts
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
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- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
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- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
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- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
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- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
- ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable
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- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
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- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
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- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
- Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system
- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
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- ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund
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- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
- Domain universe grows despite .com drag
- Did somebody spend a million bucks on a Google domain hack?
Is Microsoft buying Kinect.com?
Did Microsoft just file a UDRP complaint on a typo of a domain name it doesn’t even own?
When Microsoft announced its new Kinect games console earlier this year, it did so without owning the domain kinect.com, as I blogged at the time.
But this week somebody – I’m guessing Microsoft – has filed UDRP on the typo wwwkinect.com, which was registered about the same time as the console launched and is currently parked.
The complainant’s name doesn’t seem to be available yet, but the case was filed the same day as several other Kinect-related UDRP cases that almost certainly are Microsoft’s work, such as microsoftkinect.com.
Kinect.com currently belongs to an advertising agency called CAHG. The domain isn’t resolving (for me) at the moment, which makes me wonder if it’s in the process of changing hands.
It would certainly be unusual for the company to own a typo of somebody else’s domain, although I don’t think there’s anything in the UDRP rules that would prevent it winning the case.
UDRP, after all, only compares contested domains against owned trademarks, not domain portfolios.
While Microsoft would not have a leg to stand on if it filed UDRP against the non-typo domain, I expect a good case could be made that the large majority of people typing “kinect.com” into their browsers are looking for Microsoft’s console.
Alexa is showing that kinect.com has experienced a 350% increase in traffic over the last three months, and has increased its Alexa rank by almost two million places.
UPDATE 2011/01/01: Microsoft now owns the domain.
[…] the company filed a UDRP to get a typo of Kinect.com, wwwKinect.com. At about the same time, both Kevin Murphy and I noted that Microsoft might be trying to acquire Kinect.com. Apparently we were […]
[…] the company filed a UDRP to get a typo of Kinect.com, wwwKinect.com. At about the same time, both Kevin Murphy and I noted that Microsoft might be trying to acquire Kinect.com. Apparently we were […]
[…] the company filed a UDRP to get a typo of Kinect.com, wwwKinect.com. At about the same time, both Kevin Murphy and I noted that Microsoft might be trying to acquire Kinect.com. Apparently we were […]