Vanguard Trademark Holding, which holds the trademarks for National Car Rental, has failed to win the domain name Natonal.com in a UDRP. This is despite:
- Natonal.com resolving to a parked page full of ads for car rental
- The domain owner not responding to the UDRP
So why did Vanguard fail? It based its premise primarily on Natonal.com being confusingly similar to the company’s “National Car Rental” mark. The panelist pointed out that Natonal might be confusingly similar to National, but it’s not similar at all to the full three word mark. Vanguard argued it had rights to “National” as well, but apparently the lawyer didn’t focus on this and didn’t submit evidence. So Vanguard didn’t even clear the first hurdle of a UDRP.
Here’s something else that’s interesting. If anything, Natonal.com is a typo of National.com, which National Car Rental doesn’t even own! National.com is owned by National Semiconductor. Yes, it’s clear that the parked page at Natonal.com is targeting people looking for the car rental company, but can you imagine if an arbitration panel handed over a typo of a third party’s URL just because of how it was targeting ads?
The New York Times is collaborating with technology incubator Betaworks for a new services at News.me. This comes from a reliable source: a blog at The New York Times…
Mr. Zimbalist said that The Times Company, which participated in Betaworks’ most recent round of financing, struck an arrangement where Betaworks would buy a prototype of the app that was created by members of The Times Company’s development labs, and that same team would work with Betaworks developers to finish it.
That structure appears somewhat like a technology commercialization deal.
The post hints that the site will be a social news service. But it doesn’t really matter what it is. From a domain name perspective this is a big win for the .Me domain name. Having a large media organization releasing a site at News.me will be good for the ccTLD.
Domaining is fun. There is a thrill in seeking out new names, taking risks, and ultimately making money. While having fun is all well and good, it won’t pay the bills. So you really need to keep a strong focus on that last one, making money. I’ve been spending a great deal of time trying to come up with more effective ways to sell domains. Posting on domain auctions and reaching out directly to potential end users are the staples, but there are other ways. Here’s one of the thoughts I had and jotted down to share.
The following 151 domain names are expired and available to register at the time of writing this. As usual, all names are linked to the Godaddy buy screen for quick access as the names are usually gone quickly.
Even if you’re a company fan, resist the urge to use a trademark in your domain name.
The GM Volt electric car is getting quite a bit of buzz lately, including this article in the New York Times. The article links to GM-Volt.com, which it notes is unaffiliated with GM.
