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- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
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- Governments back down on new gTLD next round delay
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- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
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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
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- .ai helps UDRP cases rise in 2023, WIPO says
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- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
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- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
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- Weak demand for private Whois data, ICANN data shows
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- ICANN threatens to regulate your speech [RANT]
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- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
- Shiba Inu outs itself as crypto new gTLD applicant
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- Amazon planning new push into registrar market?
- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- 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
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- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
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- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
- Domain universe grows despite .com drag
Rumor sites fair game under UDRP
Could Apple shut down MacRumors.com using the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy?
That seems like a fair interpretation of a recent WIPO decision over the domain name LegoRumors.com, which was handed over to Lego Juris, maker of the popular toys.
LegoRumors.com leads to blog-style news site, not many months old, that reports on Lego products.
The site is a bit of a mess – poorly written, spammy, and ad-heavy. You’d have to be nuts to think it was an official Lego site.
It does appear to contain original content, and does not look to me like the kind of clear-cut cybersquatting that the UDRP was intended to address.
Lego succeeded in seizing the domain, regardless. The WIPO panelist (in a decision that could also have used a run through a spell-checker) found:
The disputed domain name consists of two different words, one consisting of the Complainants registered trademark and other of a generic term “rumors”. The Panel considers that the addition of the generic denomination, especially when added to a famous trademark is not sufficient to avoid confusion.
Pay attention, “rumors” sites.
The panelist also found that the domain name was registered in bad faith, on the basis that the registrant clearly was aware of Lego’s trademark (because he’s writing about Lego) and because the site contained sponsored links to potential competitors.
Apply this logic to MacRumors.com, which knowingly uses an Apple trademark in its domain name, writes about Apple products, and currently shows ads for BlackBerry and Adobe products that compete with Apple.
I’m not suggesting for a second that MacRumors is in any danger of losing its domain, but if the UDRP was implemented equitably, this case could be seen as scary precedent.
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