Quatro . com sold for $30,500 on godaddy - UDRP waiting to happen?

[kor]

Woooooo!!!

How can someone pay so much for this! Lawyers will kill him! ICANN will behead him!

Such folly! Very shame... WOW!

The 207 "quatro" brand rights holders around the world will go after him. Huuuuge penalties! Trirriors of urinited skates uff dorrars money!

Woohoooooo! Weird things...

 

[tonyk2000]

quatro means "four" (4) in Portuguese.

The 207 "quatro" brand rights holders around the world will go after him

any tm holder would have little or no chance to win udrp. Exactly because 206 more entities could potentially claim rights to the domain name. Bad faith has to be proven.

A non-exhaustive list of what constitutes bad faith registration and use of a domain name is to be found in paragraph 4(b) of the Policy.
While that list is non-exhaustive, one common feature of all the examples given is that at the time of registration of the domain name the Respondent had the Complainant in mind. In other words, at the time of registration of the Domain Name, the Respondent intended to extort money from the Complainants, to block the Complainants, to disrupt the Complainants business or to mislead Internet users into believing that the Respondents online location is in some way associated with the Complainants online location.
(WIPO Domain Name Decision: DBIZ2001-00007)

 

[jberryhill]

any tm holder would have little or no chance to win udrp.

So, you don't think the manner in which the domain name is currently being used implicates any trademark owner in particular?

 

[tonyk2000]

Yeah, parking it with GD is not wise. Thank you John! In case of an UDRP from Audi, the registrant may try (with or without success) to respond that it was the registrar who activated default parking page, that the registrant did not earn anything from parking, etc. The problem is that google no more respects fixed neutral keyword sets (kws may still be submitted, but final page may or may not show manually set kws) so parking it with any parking company may be problematic.

 

[jberryhill]

The problem is that google no more respects fixed neutral keyword sets

That's interesting.

Targeted parking was available via Uniregistry .com prior to GoDaddy buying Uniregistry and stripping out its features before shutting it down.

Regardless of the silly things people say about the subject, keyword-relevant parking for dictionary-word domain names is the safest and most defensible use for domain names held for speculative purposes. Of course, it may not be the highest revenue-generating use, which is why there is no incentive for any of the parking companies to provide it. Ultimately, GoDaddy gets the commission on the sale, and some parking revenue in the brief interval between the sale and delivery of the name to the buyer. They are insulated by their terms of service, so whatever might happen to the buyer is no skin off their back.

In any event, one can go on all day about it being a dictionary word in whatever language, or about how there are lots of potentially relevant trademarks. The domain name is being used to earn revenue from clicks looking for Audi based on similarity between the domain name and an Audi trademark. There's no denying that simple and obvious fact and, as you point out, a UDRP panel does not care who is responsible for the ads.

 

[tonyk2000]

Regardless of the silly things people say about the subject, keyword-relevant parking for dictionary-word domain names is the safest and most defensible use for domain names held for speculative purposes.

if google-based parking is used - then it is a lottery at this time. G may elect to show some (or none) from submitted kw list. Tried with sedo, bodis...

The domain name is being used to earn revenue from clicks looking for Audi based on similarity between the domain name and an Audi trademark.

and it is unfortunate. However, based on the screenshot you posted, it does not look like godaddy-based cashparking (where the registrants earn $$$). It is a default godaddy page which appeared instantly, since gd assigned their default dns servers and the registrant did not yet change the dns. Any and all revenue goes to GD at this time.
John, are you aware of UDRP cases where the domain was found to be used in bad faith (such as parked with wrong keywords) but still registered in good faith?

 

[NickB]

Buy Domains sold the .org recently for $2,000 and the new owner has put up ad's as well

 

[jberryhill]

John, are you aware of UDRP cases where the domain was found to be used in bad faith (such as parked with wrong keywords) but still registered in good faith?

Very few. If there are a some incidental bad PPC links, for example, I have managed to win several:

https://www.adrforum.com/DomainDecisions/206309.htm

"It is the finding of this Panel that the brief appearance of aviation links on Respondent’s Web sites was automatically provided by a pay-per-click search engine provider and was not intended by Respondent. Further, since there is no evidence that Respondent’s business is in connection with aviation, we do not find that the Respondent had a duty to be aware of Complainant’s mark."

Now, you'll notice that is a very old case. Some other examples:

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006-1275.html

"Nor is the Panel persuaded that the presence of advertising links to alternative sources of OUTSIDE magazine subscriptions (among hundreds of unrelated links) implicates the Respondent’s knowledge of the Complainant’s marks and intent to confuse Internet users. The Respondent denies such knowledge and intent. There is no evidence in the record that casts doubt on the Respondent’s claim that the advertising links are served automatically by a third-party advertising feed provider using keyword search techniques rather than human selection. The automated advertising feed arrangements are such that it cannot be assumed that the Respondent requested such links or was even aware of them before receiving notice of this dispute. In the face of the Respondent’s denials and the automated nature of the advertising links, the Panel considers these particular links insufficient to prove the Respondent’s intent to mislead Internet users by means of the Domain Name itself.

In short, the Panel is unwilling to attribute bad faith to this search software. And it does not feel warranted in presuming bad faith on the part of a company using such software when the “keywords” it provides are merely dictionary words."

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2007/d2007-1816.html

"The Respondent has been using the Domain Name to link it to various parking pages featuring sponsored links through which the Respondent derives pay-per-click or referral income. If the sponsored links have a preponderance in any direction, it appears to be in the direction of the operas of Wagner and primarily, Tristan und Isolde. However, the spread of links is a wide one and not obviously fashion orientated, although for a time one of the many categories of links featured was a ‘clothing’ category."

Certainly, if the domain registrant had the domain name prior to the trademark, then current use is not going to outweigh the impossibility of bad faith registration.

Also, it used to be possible to look up keyword bids, and there were a couple of cases where I caught the UDRP complainant intentionally bidding on keywords to show up in PPC:

https://www.adrforum.com/DomainDecisions/843597.htm

"Complainant has placed a spectacularly high maximum bid of $2.74 to have its advertisement for absorbents displayed in response to Internet searches for the word “pig.” Complainant caused the display of its own ad on the Respondent’s website, and that such a result was entirely independent of any consciously directed activity of the Respondent.

The only link relevant to the Complainant is the result of the Complainant’s own action. None of the other links displayed at <pig.com> have any relationship to the Complaint’s oil absorbent products, and thus do not infringe the Complainant’s mark nor do they “divert” consumers who are searching for products or services relevant to the ordinary meaning of the word “pig.”"

Another situation is where the PPC results are geo-targeted, such that the domain registrant would not even know what are the PPC results displayed elsewhere:

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2005/d2005-0241.html

"It is unnecessary to decide whether any intentional display by the Respondent of insurance advertisements on his website after becoming aware of the Complainant’s mark could render illegitimate that which was previously legitimate because the Panel accepts that the terms under which Google makes its Adsense advertisements available do not permit the Respondent to control them and that the Respondent cannot be aware of their content as displayed in any particular country."

Now, if you look at those cases, you'll notice that (a) I successfully defended each one of them and (b) they were all a fairly long time ago. They are not broadly representative of outcomes in cases where there are bad incidental PPC links.

Obviously, if there are no bad PPC links, one doesn't have to spend energy and part of the word count quota arguing a point that is an unfavorable one.

Hypothetically, if this one went to a dispute, then you are starting from a position that the domain name is Quatro and is clearly advertising things relevant to the Audi Quattro mark.

As a domain registrant, compare your circumstances there versus a sales lander with a picture of someone standing in front of a Portuguese flag holding up four fingers.

It's all about what someone else - and a very skeptical someone else who usually sees a lot of cybersquatted names - is going to infer about your motivation on the basis of what's in front of their face.

If you had those images and a contact form, you'd be fine.