Category: Disputes

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Disputes News Trademarks WIPO

Pharmaceutical Product Development wins case to get PPD.com from its owner

ppd

Updated June 27, 2011, 2:53 PM:  The decision has been published on the WIPO website. 

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It is a baffling case.  A global contract research organization providing drug discovery, development and lifecycle management services, will get the three-letter domain ppd.com, according to a WIPO UDRP decision handed down this week ordering the name transferred.

Pharmaceutical Product Development, Inc (who uses the web address ppdi.com) filed a complaint against Damian Macafee (a.k.a James M. Van Johns) back in April 2011 which caught the attention of other bloggers around the domain industry like Elliot Silver who wrote, “I really hate seeing UDRP filings for three letter .com domain names. In my opinion, three letter acronyms usually have many different meanings, and it’s generally tough to say who would have a right to own the name.”

Details of the WIPO UDRP decision have yet to be released, but are expected to be posted online in the next few days.

Damian Macafee owns over 1,000 domain names, many of which are three-letter .com and .net names. 

Over the last 10+ years, Damian’s had to fight a number of disputes. 

He lost the case to keep baseballweekly.com starting back in 2000, then went on to lose oxford-online.com, resicom.com, attworldnet.com, fredricksofhollywood.com, carrefour.net, micorosft.com, walkman.net, and adm.org.

Although the WIPO panel determined that it was “somewhat questionable” adm.org was registered in bad faith, Damian still lost the case because the panel asserted he had registered and used domain names in bad faith in the past.

The only case he’s successfully defended to date at WIPO involved fcc.org in 2004.  The complaint was filed by Family & Children’s Center Inc.  Damian won after the panel found that the complainant had not established that he had registered the domain name in bad faith.  The complainant was also not the owner of a registered trademark or service mark for FCC.

Damian Macafee, I imagine, hasn’t been too happy about domain disputes filed against him over the years.  Screenshot history for the domain name ppd.com and many others in his portfolio display the words “F**k You”, according to DomainTools.

I’ve reached out to Damian to discover more about the case and will update this post if I receive a response.

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Disputes Movies National Arbitration Forum News Trademarks

Domain dispute over ManofSteel.com, film set for release in December 2012

Man of Steel

Updated July 20, 2011:  Turns out the complainant in the case was DC Comics, not Warner Bros.  A single-member panel has ruled in favor of DC Comics and ordered the domain name to be transferred.  Details here.

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It appears Warner Bros wants the domain name ManofSteel.com for its big film project set to release in December 2012.

A complaint (case no. 1395018) was filed with the National Arbitration Forum (“NAF”) this week.  Though the complainant isn’t known at this time, DC Comics a subsidiary company of Warner Bros has owned the trademark on “The Man of Steel” since the 1980s. 

Over the last ten years, Warner Bros has filed (and won) a number of domain disputes including chasingsuperman.com, batman-costume.com, gilligansisland.com, harrypotterzone.com, justice-league.com, and dozens more.  The company’s claims were denied twice, once over djbatman.com and the second time over daisydukes.com which is owned by Rick Schwartz.  Rick Schwartz won the case after Warner Bros had not satisfied its burden of proof to establish bad faith registration and use under paragraph 4(a)(iii) of the Policy.

In the case of ManofSteel.com, which is currently registered to a LBR Enterprises in California, chances are the domain name will be transferred to Warner Bros. if they are the complainant.

The company also doesn’t own TheManofSteel.com, but no dispute has been filed as of yet.  The domain name is currently listed for sale at Sedo for $300 USD, a cheap price compared to what the company may have to pay in legal fees (should it file a complaint) for a legal dispute that is not guaranteed to go in their favor.

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Disputes News Video Games

ModernWarfare3.com, site taken down; domain not owned by Activision

Modern Warfare 3 reveal trailer

The website had reached over 7,000 Facebook Likes in the weeks following the announcement of Modern Warfare 3 and looked confusingly similar to Activision’s official MW3 site.  And the site even added new features in the past couple weeks including a newsletter for announcements, videos, pre-order links, and a forum that was slated to launch.

But now the site ModernWarfare3.com (which is currently not owned by Activision), returns a “404” not found page on the web — a move that may have been prompted by Activision’s lawyers after witnessing the site’s growth and similar look to its own official site, which can be found at callofduty.com/mw3.

Although it’s difficult to tell whether the site is just down for something as simple as maintenance, this is the first time since Activision’s newest title was leaked that ModernWarfare3.com has been offline for a significant time period.  In this case, days not hours. 

Activision and ModernWarfare3.com

The big question is whether Activision is even trying to acquire the domain.

The company doesn’t have a strong trackrecord of buying domain names on the aftermarket, at least publicly.  Nor has the company ever filed and won a formal domain dispute, according to a quick query at UDRPSearch.com. 

As an example of Activision’s poor track record with domains, last year the company registered several names for possible future game titles including: callofdutyfuturewarfare.com, callofdutyfuturewarfare2.com, callofdutyfuturewarfare3.com, and a number of variations including codfuturewarefare.com, codfuturewarfare2.com, and codfuturewarfare3.com.  The company also registered secretwarfare2.com, secretwarfare3.com, spacewarfare2.com and spacewarfare3.com.  But what you might notice about the list is not what the company purchased, but more so what the company didn’t — generic domains like futurewarfare.com or spacewarfare.com.

Regardless of the company’s history with domains, this time though when it comes to a domain it doesn’t own, the company may finally be honing in.

Considering Modern Warfare 3 is set to be one of the company’s biggest launches to date in November 2011 and will coincide with the launch of its own online social network called: Call of Duty Elite, the registrant information could be changing soon, just like Halo4.com did yesterday – as reported here on Fusible and covered by Gawker Media’s Kotaku.

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Disputes News WIPO

Twitter adds twiter.biz to its case at WIPO

Official Twitter homepage

Twitter has added an additional domain name to its dispute recently filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) over the typo twiter.com. 

According to the WIPO Guide to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), “Under Paragraph 3(c) of the UDRP Rules, the Complaint may relate to more than one domain name, so long as the person or entity that is the registrant of the domain names specified in the Complaint is the same.”

Although twiter.biz doesn’t resolve at the time of this story, twiter.com still has a website online that tricks visitors who accidentally type in the address into thinking they’re on an official Twitter page.  

An online survey then asks a series of questions before trying to gather your cell phone and e-mail information.

A compliance review is currently pending for WIPO Case D2011-0986.

Categories
Disputes News WIPO

Twiter.com (typo) domain dispute is not the only problem name for Twitter

Tweeter surveys

If you’re a frequent Twitter user, at some point you may have accidentally misspelled the URL and ended up landing on a web page promising you a free iPad 2 for simply filling out a short, anonymous 30 second questionnaire.

On Saturday, I was the first to report that Twitter Inc had filed a complaint with the owner of the domain name twiter.com, who uses the same tactic mentioned above of confusing visitors into thinking they’re on an official, legit site.  The story grabbed headlines from The Inquisitr to The Next Web and The Domains to the Financial Post.

Though it could take months for a decision to be handed down by a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panel, the outcome (if in favor of Twitter) could pave the way for other Twitter (typo) domain names.  That is, if Twitter files cases against other Twitter (typo) domains that use the same method of diverting users to an unrelated site that is confusingly similar to Twitter’s own.

If Twiter.com loses, several others could follow. 

Here’s a list of other Twitter (typo) domain names using the very same technique as Twiter.com.

twitte.com – redirects users to tweetersurveys.com.  The website reported over 20,000 unique visitors in May 2010, according to a rough estimate by Compete. 

twtter.com – redirects users to quizedonline.com and other random Twitter-looking survey sites.  Twtter.com reported over 25,000 visits in August 2010.

tiwitter.com, twiteer.com, twutter.com, and teitter.com – all redirect users to socialquizcenter.com, a survey site that no longer resolves.

I didn’t list twttr.com.  That’s because twttr.com as you may already know, is owned by Twitter and is the original name for the micro-blogging service.