Microsoft’s lawyers have officially taken ownership of the domain names XboxOne.com and XboxOne.net after filing a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) back in late May.
Both domains just changed registrants to Microsoft, c/o The Richard Law Group, a law firm that often represents Microsoft in domain disputes. Last year, the firm helped secure XboxPhone.com and XboxTablet.com. Those names are among a long list of names recovered at NAF by Microsoft.
The victory makes Microsoft the first company to secure the matching dotcom domain of its next-generation video game console.
Sony doesn’t own PlayStation4.com nor has it filed any type of public complaint. Playstation4.com re-directs visitors to PSX Extreme, a video game website that covers PlayStation news. Playstation4.com is currently owned by Poise Media Inc., according to WHOIS records.
Nintendo recently suffered a somewhat embarrassing domain defeat, after its complaint over WiiU.com was denied.
The official ruling by NAF has yet to be published on its website, but should appear any day now.
Here’s a look at the WHOIS record for XboxOne.com, showing the updated record:
UPDATE 3 July 24, 2013: In a separate but related case, Microsoft took ownership of Xbox1.com (WHOIS). The company filed a dispute over the domain in early June, and like XboxOne.com, the dispute was withdrawn from NAF before a ruling was issued.
UPDATE 2 July 19, 2013: Both domains have switched over to Microsoft’s domain servers, but instead of directing users to the official Xbox website, they redirect users to its Bing search engine.
UPDATE 1 July 17, 2013: The case with NAF was withdrawn according to an update posted on its website today. While it’s unknown exactly why the case was withdrawn, chances are the previous owner decided to hand over the names to Microsoft’s lawyers instead of waiting for a ruling by a panel.
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(Image of E3 via Xbox Wire)