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Microsoft wins Kinect domains, but still doesn’t own kinect.com

Kevin Murphy, August 22, 2010, 22:19:21 (UTC), Domain Policy

Microsoft has successfully recovered two domain names that contain its Kinect games trademark, but kinect.com still belongs to another company.
A National Arbitration Forum UDRP panelist handed Microsoft kinectxbox.com and xbox-kinect.com, which were registered on the eve of Kinect’s launch, calling the registrations “opportunistic bad faith”.
The registrant, located in France, said in his defense that he’d planned to create a fan site for the Kinect, which is an upgrade for the Xbox games console.
But he didn’t get a chance – the domains were registered on June 12, Kinect was announced the following day, and Microsoft had slapped him with a UDRP complaint by June 29.
As I reported back in June, kinect.com is currently registered to an ad agency called CAHG. I’d be surprised if Microsoft hasn’t tried to buy the domain already.
Interestingly, Microsoft, which looks like a client of Melbourne IT’s brand management service, does own kinect.co, but it currently redirects to a Bing search.

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