Last month, Research In Motion filed a complaint with WIPO over BlackberryTablet.com, a domain name that was first registered over 1 year ago on January 24, 2010.
While details haven’t been released, it appears both parties have reached a settlement. The case has been suspended at WIPO and as of yesterday, the domain name re-directs to the Playbook Tablet page on the Blackberry web site.
And, as of Thursday, Feb. 10, the domain name is now registered to Research In Motion Limited according to Whois records.
Although RIM has had to file literally dozens of complaints over the years at WIPO in order to win web addresses that are clearly abusive registrations, the company does own BlackberryPlaybook.com and Playbooktablet.com. But despite RIM expecting to be a major player in the tablet market, it doesn’t own all the domain names that could potentially help its online marketing even further. Perhaps the best name for its tablet product, Playbook.com, is operated by Playbook Publications which runs a web site for sports handicapper Marc Lawrence.
The Blackberry Playbook is rumored to be launched some time next month or at the latest, by April.
In all previous cases, the domain names were transferred from the respondent back to Zynga. The list of domain names includes zynga-chips.com, zynga.cc, zyngachips.com, zyngapoker.com, buyzyngachips.net, cheapzyngachips.net, chips4zynga.com, yourzyngachips.com, and zyngachips4sell.com.
As TechCrunch reported in March 2010, Zynga rolled out gift cards at a number of major retailers in the U.S. Though Zynga refers to them as “game cards“, they are essentially gift cards which can be used for in-game currency to buy the items you want.
Zyngagiftcards.com is currently registered to Joanna Hewett according to Whois Records, and has been registered since December 2009. Zyngaworld.com is registered to David Cahill of Australia.
Oddly enough, Zynga doesn’t own zyngagamecards.com and hasn’t filed a dispute over the domain as of yet, even though it refers to its “gift cards” as “game cards”.
The company also doesn’t own zyngaecards.com, online “game cards” that can be purchased and sent to users with a personal message. What’s even stranger, is the domain name isn’t even registered at the time of this story, despite the number of abusive registrations the company regularly encounters. But given Zynga’s success at WIPO, hopefully people will learn some lessons, and avoid these types of registrations.
Though the company will likely win these domain disputes and have the names transferred, they might not be as lucky with the trademark dispute over Blingville, which so far has backfired after Blingville responded with a lawsuit, and thousands have lined up to test and play the soon-to-be released Facebook game.
After meeting as high school students in 2002, Alex Benzer and Charlotte Genevier, co-founders of Webligo developed and launched Social Engine in 2007. The product is described as a social-network-in-a-box, a white label social networking application that is growing and now earns nearly $1MM/year according to the Webligo home page.
With dorm room offices and virtually zero operating costs, Webligo’s savings grew quickly. In 2006, Alex and Charlotte began developing a new product – SocialEngine – seeded with their sales and the recent acquisitions of two earlier projects (BlogHoster and IMS Pro). SocialEngine, 100% bootstrapped without any outside investment, was launched in 2007 with great reception. With SocialEngine now earning nearly $1M/year, Alex and Char have built a team of seven developers and designers to grow SocialEngine and explore other opportunities.
The only problem is, Webligo’s founders launched the product using the .net (socialengine.net), instead of the .com.
Now Webligo wants the .com, so the company has filed a WIPO complaint over the domain name SocialEngine.com.
While it’s not known whether Webligo made a previous offer on the .com domain, the company recently filed for a trademark on “Social Engine” in Sept. 2010, three years after launching their product, and nearly 11 years after the domain name socialengine.com was first registered.
The current registrant according to GoDaddy Whois is listed as “Domains for Sale” out of Columbus, OH, with an email address of DomainsForSale -at- Gmail.com.
Here’s a little more information about Social Engine, in a video pitch posted on TechCrunch back in 2008.
Research In Motion (RIM) filed a complaint this week with WIPO over BlackberryTablet.com, ahead of the company’s launch of its own tablet in early 2011.
Although Research In Motion has named its tablet, Playbook, the company is going after the owner of BlackberryTablet.com who first registered the domain name nearly 1 year ago on January 24, 2010.
Ever since Apple introduced the iPad, tablets have been in demand, but this is the first such case filed with WIPO over a tablet domain name, but it likely won’t be the last. According to the reports from CES 2011, over 80 tablet launches will be taking place in 2011.
Research In Motion isn’t the only company missing its name
A quick glance at some of the bigger names launching tablets, shows that Research In Motion isn’t the only company who doesn’t own their name + tablet. Only a handful of companies appear to have registered their name in time. Not even the mighty Apple which leads the tablet market with its iPad owns Appletablet.com. The domain name was first registered back in 2006 and serves as an online resource guide for Apple products. Apple doesn’t own iPad.com either.
Motorola which is launching the Xoom in the first quarter of 2011 doesn’t own MotorolaTablet.com. The owner has the name up for sale.
Dell, so far, might be the only exception in the lot. The company does own Delltablet.com and it redirects the domain to its homepage on Dell.com. The company which launched its own tablet called “Streak” in 2010, also owns DellStreak.com. And if Dell pays attention to the domain aftermarket, it has a chance of getting the generic domain streak.com, which has been put up for sale with a reserve price range of 10,000 – 24,999 EUR in the upcoming GreatDomains auction starting January 20th.
Samsungtablet.com, Panasonictablet.com – neither name is owned by the company and you’ll be hard pressed to find very many manufacturers that own their company name + tablet.
Research In Motion and WIPO
Research In Motion has filed dozens of complaints over the years with WIPO over domain names and it has had success in having a large portion of the names transferred. Cases the company have won include RIM.com, researchinmotion.com, blackberryworld.com, blackberryguru.com, and dozens of other cases.
Currently, Research In Motion has other cases active with WIPO where a decision has not been made, including blackberrybing.com and blackberrybridge.com.
As the tablet market heats up, companies will be suiting up to duke it out with owners of domain names.
But there’s one domain owner who won’t have to worry about a battle – he’ll just have to worry whether to turn down huge offers or to develop the domain name into the top online tablet destination – Aron Meystedt of XF Investments who owns Tablets.com. As I first reported in the beginning of November 2010, Aron who also owns the first .com domain ever registered (symbolics.com), acquired Tablets.com for an undisclosed amount.
If you’re actually curious about the Blackberry Playbook which is expected to be forthcoming in Q1 of 2011, here’s a preview of its features.
TechCrunch is reporting that Twitter is going after the domain name Twittersearch.com, that was registered by its owner in March 2007. Twitter launched its popular micro-blogging service a year before, in March 2006.
Twitter late last week filed a UDRP complaint, notably its first ever since the company was founded, in an effort to obtain ownership over the (currently parked) domain name twittersearch.com – as you can see here.
Obviously, Twitter is right to do this, since the domain is likely to cause some confusion, although we should note Twitter hasn’t managed to secure a trademark for the term ‘twitter’ in the United States so far, despite multiple attempts.
A look at a rough traffic estimate provided by Compete, shows TwitterSearch.com receives several thousand visitors per month.
To avoid a trademark issue, other sites like TwitterCounter.com, a site which receives over 1 million visitors per month and provides stats, graphs and widgets for Twitter users, licenses the Twitter name from Twitter, Inc. Probably a smart move short term, but long term it might be in the company’s interest to re-brand. The company also owns Twittermail.com.
Oddly enough, Twitter Inc hasn’t gone after the owner of Twiter.com (a popular typo of Twitter), who is obviously trying to trick unsuspecting visitors into clicking on ads, but as TechCrunch points out: ” Twitter hasn’t managed to secure a trademark for the term ‘twitter’ in the United States so far, despite multiple attempts.” So winning a case for Twiter, might be a lot harder than winning a case for TwitterSearch.com.
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