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Nationnal.com and Natiional.com – One is a Trademark Typo, the Other Isn’t

Andrew Allemann — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 18:10:49 +0000

Two different panels come to different conclusions in essentially the same case.

I’m frequently perplexed by UDRP decisions for similar domain names. Here’s another example.

National Arbitration Forum has handed down decisions for nationnal.com and natiional.com literally within days of each other. Both domains are typos of “National”, and both are parked at HitFarm. The cases were brought by Vanguard Trademark Holdings, which owns the National Car Rental brand.

In both cases the respondents’ attorney (it was Ari Goldberger for both cases) argued essentially the same thing: it’s a generic typo that wasn’t registered to target National Car Rental.

Yet the owner of Nationnal.com lost; the owner of Natiional.com won.

Let’s start with Nationnal.com, in which the Complainant won in a 2-1 split decision. All three panelists found that it was confusingly similar and that the domain owner had no legitimate interest. But panelist James Bridgeman dissented on bad faith registration, stating “there is no evidence that Respondent registered the disputed domain name to target Complainant’s goodwill.”

Now switch to Natiional.com, another clear typo of National.

Remember, both domains were parked at the same parking company and showed generally the same links. But in this case, the panel determined that any links on the parked page related to car rentals were “troubling” but minor.

The Panel has reviewed the website as it exists to date, and sees that the list of car rental referrals contained in the website is fairly short and if not incidental, certainly not a significant portion of the revenues potentially generated by the site.

The panel goes on to decide that this is merely a generic typo, and reaffirms the right to own generic typos if they aren’t registered specifically to target the trademark owner:

The Panel finds that Complainant has not shown that it was targeted by this typographical variation registration. The word “national” is just too common.

Therefore, the Panel’s is confronted with a policy decision. The mark and the domain name are confusingly similar. The typo-squatting business strategy is obvious.

Ultimately, it is the common word that prevents a finding for Complainant. “Rights in the name,” aside, the word “national” is simply too common for the registration and use of the typo squatting variation “natiional” to be considered “bad faith.”

The panel continues later:

The Panel finds that a respondent is free to register a domain name consisting of misspelling of common terms where there is little or no other evidence of the elements of “bad faith” and particularly where there is no evidence that Respondent had another party or its trademark in mind when it registered the “typo” domain name.

So it’s certainly interesting that panels came up with two different answers here.

Are you ready for the kicker?

National Car Rental doesn’t own National.com.

Yep, that’s right. National.com is owned by National Semiconductor. So a panel just handed National Car Rental a typo of a semiconductor firm’s web site.

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Report: Google May Earn $497 Million a Year from Typosquatting

Andrew Allemann — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:42:52 +0000

Study says typosquatting money big. But there may be a conflict of interest.

A new study suggests that Google may earn $497 million a year from typosquatters targeting the 100,000 most popular .com sites on the web.

Although I question some of the logic in the report and its appendices, and it is tainted by one of the authors being involved in a lawsuit against Google for typosquatting, the data is still fascinating.

First, for the claim of $497 million in revenue from typosquatting each year. That’s based on some assumptions that are weak at best:

-The study reviewed the top 3,264 .COM web sites, and found that 0.7% of their traffic was from typos. It then extrapolated this to the top 100,000 .com sites, assuming that much typo traffic to those sites as well. The truth is, typosquatters rarely target these less popular sites, meaning that less of their traffic is typosquatted.

-The authors concluded that domain revenue per search is the same as that of searches at Google. This is based on a vary narrow Efficient Frontier case study.

On the other hand, the authors may have under-counted traffic in other ways. For example, the report doesn’t take into consideration Google and Yahoo’s error redirect services, in which ISPs and computer makers hijack typos and send them to pages full of ads. It also doesn’t take into consideration typos such as .cm.

But the report is certainly fascinating. The authors found the most popular Google advertiser IDs on typo domains. They feature common names such as GoDaddy (probably through auto-parked pages on customers’ domains) and Sedo.

For domain servers with over 100,000 domains, the report found that dnsnameserver.org (FirstLook) had the highest ratio of typo domains at 4.75%, followed by trellian.com at 4.47% and hitfarm.com at 3.76%. When you look at nameservers over 25,000 domains, the top two are 365.com at 8.89% and ParkLogic.com at 8.19%.

Of course, not all typos are used inappropriately. CitizenHawk shows up as having 32% of its domains as typos, but the company is holding these on behalf of the trademark holders.

The report also found a number of extraordinarily “clean” nameservers. One of those is Michael Berken’s MostWantedDomains.com.

Another interesting finding is the domains that are most typosquatted by competitors to send traffic to their sites. It names the competitor that is receiving the traffic, too.

One final point. The authors found their crawlers blocked after hitting domain parking company’s nameservers excessively. They suggest the parking companies were trying to thwart the authors’ efforts. My guess is their click fraud and DDOS systems just kicked in.

At any rate, the research is worth reviewing.

[Via New Scientist]

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Willie Mays Wants His (Domain) Name Back

Andrew Allemann — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:14:16 +0000

Hall-of-Famer Willie Mays asks arbitrator to get domain name WillieMays.com.

Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer Willie Mays has filed for arbitration with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to get the domain name WillieMays.com. The case was posted to WIPO’s web site this morning.

The “Say Hey Kid” played for the New York and San Francisco Giants before concluding his career with the New York Mets.

The domain name is currently registered to “Global Access” in Isle of Man. It is parked with HitFarm, and shows links for “San Francisco Giants Tickets”, “New York Mets”, and “SF Giants”. The parked page includes a generic picture unrelated to baseball. The domain appears to have transferred to its current owner in 2005-2007. Compete.com suggests the domain name gets nominal traffic.

WIPO will decide the case within a couple months.

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Jay Leno Tries to Tackle Cybersquatting Problem

Andrew Allemann — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:19:21 +0000

Comedian files claims for three domain names, but still hasn’t done anything with JayLeno.com

Comedian Jay Leno has filed claims with World Intellectual Property Organization to get three domain names: jaylenoshow.com, weeknightswithjayleno.com, and thejaylenoshow.com. Now if only he’d do something with JayLeno.com, which he picked up last year.

JayLenoShow.com’s whois record is protected by domain privacy and is parked at HitFarm. Weeknightswithjayleno.com is owned by a Wisconsin man. A phone call to the phone number in whois for the domain name went to a voice mail recording for a roofing company.

TheJayLenoShow.com is registered to real estate agent Javier Zambrano in Katy, Texas, and the domain name forwards to his real estate web site.

Contacted by phone this morning, Zambrono said he’s going to fight the claim in arbitration. He says the domain name doesn’t bring him any additional real estate business.

“Nobody looking for homes is going to go to that domain,” said Zambrono. He claims there was no trademark on the name when he registered it.

Leno’s employer and NBC parent company GE picked up the domain name JayLeno.com last year from Anything.com Ltd., the same company that coughed up JerrySeinfeld.com when comedian Jerry Seinfeld realized he wasn’t really master of his domain. (No arbitration was filed for JayLeno.com, so the circumstances of the transfer to GE are unknown.)

The kicker: GE hasn’t done anything with the domain name nor its nameservers, and it still resolves to an old “unofficial fan site”. Even more humorous is that NBC’s web site rates Jay Leno fan sites. One of the sites it rates is JayLeno.com.

Someone should teach GE how to set up domain forwarding.

Photo from NBC.com.

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Ari Goldberger Defends PropellerHead.com

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:21:31 +0000

Domain attorney helps registrant keep domain name in UDRP.

When you think of “propeller head”, what comes to mind? I think of those beanie hats with a propeller on them. You know, the type that nerds wear. Pilots might think of the plane part.

But a software company thought it should have rights to PropellerHead.com. Unfortunately for Propellerhead Holding AB, it couldn’t convince a three person panel at National Arbitration Forum.

The registrant of PropellerHead.com at one time had the domain parked at Hitfarm with links that may be competitive to the software company. But before receiving the complaint, it had switched the landing page to a generic page with a search box.

The panel decided that the domain was not registered and used in bad faith, giving victory to Goldberger and his team. But I’m surprised at the brevity of the panel’s written decision. Goldberger appears to have asked for a finding of reverse domain name hijacking. Panels usually consider all three elements of a case when reverse domain name hijacking is alleged, yet in this case it only considered the bad faith argument. The panel punted and merely wrote:

“The Panel does not find that Complainant has attempted to engage in reverse domain name hijacking.”

It provided no reasoning whatsoever.

Read the decision here.

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Fabulous Follows the 80/20 Rule

Andrew Allemann — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:42:06 +0000

Parking company moves to invite only model.

Domain parking company and domain registrar Fabulous is no longer accepting web applications for its domain name parking services and wholesale registration accounts. It will only accept referrals going forward. In fact, the sign-up button at Fabulous.com has been removed. (Fabulous customers who wish to transfer domains to buyers can send them a link to open a retail account).

You’re going to start seeing more of this in the future. 20% of domain parking customers provide 80% of the revenue to the parking companies. (It’s probably more like 5% and 95%). It’s the classic 80/20 rule. Since some domain parking companies use manual processes to get customers set up on their system, it doesn’t make financial sense to serve customers that won’t generate much lifetime revenue.

You’ll also see domain parking companies re-evaluating the acquisition cost of getting new customers. They may shift more of their dollars to referral programs which don’t require upfront marketing dollars.

The Google Adsense for Domains “Online” model, on the other hand, is set up for customers with just a handful of domains. Some domain name parking companies with simple and automated onboarding procedures can also handle smaller customers.

A handful of domain name parking companies, such as HitFarm, Skenzo, and SmartName, have always restricted usage to the biggest domainers.

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Suggest Companies for 4th Annual Domain Name Wire Survey

Andrew Allemann — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:58:09 +0000

Fill in the gaps: suggest missing answers for domain name survey.

It’s the end of the year, which means it’s almost time for the 4th Annual Domain Name Wire Survey.

Every year after the results are released, I am inevitably am contact by a company asking why it wasn’t listed as an option in a particular category. Starting last year I invited readers to “nominate” a company for each category, and I’m going to do the same thing this time.

Please read each of the categories below. If you feel a company, product, etc. is missing then post a comment and I’ll take it into consideration.

Domain Parking Services
Active Audience
Domain Hop
DomainSpa
DomainSponsor
Dotzup
Fabulous
GoDaddy Cash Parking
Goldkey
Google Adsense for Domains
HitFarm
HotKeys
NameDrive
Parked.com
Sedo/SedoPro
Skenzo
SmartName
TrafficZ

Domain Parking Alternatives
AEIOU
EvoLanding
Sendori
Site Graduate
WhyPark

Online Sales Venues for Buying/Selling
Afternic/Name Media
eBay
Forums
Sedo
SnapNames (non-expired domains)
TDNAM/GoDaddy

Which company is most innovative selling domains in the aftermarket?
Name Media (Afternic, BuyDomains)
Oversee.net (Moniker, SnapNames)
Sedo (Sedo, GreatDomains)
Thought Convergence (Aftermarket.com, DomainTools.com)
Go Daddy (TDNAM)

Escrow Services
Afternic
Escrow.com
EscrowDNS
Sedo
Moniker Escrow

Domain Forums
AcornDomains
DomainState
DNForum
NamePros

Expiring Domain Services
Afternic (Expired only)
NameJet
Pool
SnapNames
TDNAM/GoDaddy

Domain Conferences
Domain Roundtable
DOMAINfest
GEODomain Expo
T.R.A.F.F.I.C.

Person with most influence in domain industry
Please make suggestions…otherwise I’ll take the top five vote getters from last year

Top News Story of 2008
Registrar Domain Warehousing (Standard Tactics, et al)
Parking Turmoil (Falling PPC, Google goes direct)
Domain Sales resilient in downturn compared to other assets
Domain company acquisitions (Oversee acquires Moniker, Thought Convergence acquires Name Intelligence)

If you have suggestions for other categories, please comment.

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