Aged City+Airport.com domains

[slader23]

Has anyone found legal trouble with owning these? I own one and was wondering if I should abstain from approaching the regional gov in charge of the airport. Of course there is no exact match trademark but they have long tail TM's of the name i.e (REGION+CITY+AIRPORT) and (AIRPORTCODE+ CITY+AIRPORT). They currently use the longtail TM (Region+City+Airport) for a 22L.com domain as their main webpage. This isn't a tiny airport...it's an international airport that gets 25k+ monthly searches.

I'm leaning towards parking it and seeing if they come around because their current domain is a real bother for a non English speaker to spell or even remember.

Anyways I'd love to get some insight on this before I can proceed or....if its too much of a risk, refrain from doing so.

Regards,

Slader

 

[deez007]

Interesting one indeed.

I'm wondering if they have any legal claim to the domain at all... also, seeing as it's a city, which means government money, which means not their own money...IMO they might be more willing to part with the money (to buy ur domain) than if they were a private company/person... I dont think they would have any legal claim to the domain but obviously, I'm no lawyer.. if you can get confirmation that legally they can't touch you then I think wouldn't be a bad idea to contact them...OR find out who the right person to speak to is...then pick up the phone and call the person and test the water with them to see how open they are to acquiring the domain...

 

[jberryhill]

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000-0638.html

 

[deez007]

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000-0638.html

Niiice!

Thanks for sharing this link @jberryhill - much appreciated... Definitely sheds some light on the situation.

 

[postscripter]

Interesting one indeed.

I'm wondering if they have any legal claim to the domain at all... also, seeing as it's a city, which means government money, which means not their own money...IMO they might be more willing to part with the money (to buy ur domain) than if they were a private company/person... I dont think they would have any legal claim to the domain but obviously, I'm no lawyer.. if you can get confirmation that legally they can't touch you then I think wouldn't be a bad idea to contact them...OR find out who the right person to speak to is...then pick up the phone and call the person and test the water with them to see how open they are to acquiring the domain...

Hi .

Can you udpate us on this? I have a similar situation and want to know how was your experience? Did you get a complaint? or you managed to sell for the airport or for another domainor? or no one ever contacted you

 

[jberryhill]

Updates? Sure....

Domain	Case	Date	Decision
seattletacomaairport.com	WIPO D2024-4843	2025-01-31	Transfer
loganinternationalairportboston.com	WIPO D2023-0859	2023-04-27	Complaint denied
istanbulsairport.com	WIPO D2022-0400	2022-05-05	Transfer with dissenting opinion
grand-rapids-airport.com	NAF 1982577	2022-03-01	Transferred
dwfairport.com	NAF 1904597	2020-08-15	Transferred
dfw-international-airport.com	NAF 1861554	2019-10-08	Transferred
bradley-airport.com	NAF 1829581	2019-03-26	Claim Denied
istanbulairport.com	WIPO D2019-0062	2019-03-15	Complaint denied

Ultimately, though, I don't see any value in domain names like this. There is no sizeable airport which does not already have whatever URL they already use, and the folks who run them are not sitting around all day waiting to bestow some kind of prize on someone who shows up wanting to sell them a domain name. "Why, yes, sure, we've sunk all kinds of money into our existing website, but we'd love to give you money and then have to invest in another one, or simply to spend money for a domain name to forward to our existing website," said no one ever.

Shuttle or taxi services might have a marginal interest for SEO purposes, but they're not going to spend significant amounts of money on these things either.

So, my question is, what is the point of registering domains like these?