Friday, August 29, 2008

Aftermarket.com

Bad URL

The Good URL Bad URL Facebook group is rockin'. Peter Askew of Domainer's Gazette posted some brut-URLS. Here's an example of a great URL selection but poor promotion. When I first saw it I thought the URL was AftermarketDomainsForSale.com (which, ironically, a squatter has.) Not sure why URL display is such an afterthought to people.

Update 9/3: Before the rest of you domainers jump all over me for my misuse of the term "squatter" please read the comments. I stand corrected.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, that's a terrible graphic, I've noticed that before, but I wouldn't say the registrant of "AftermarketDomainsForSale.com" is a squatter. The word "Aftermarket" by itself is generic and cannot be trademarked and "DomainsForSale" is a descriptive phrase. "Aftermarket.com" could be trademarked (but isn't) so although this other domain is long, ugly and cumbersome, cyber-squatting it's not.

NoDomainsForSale.com said...

If ‘AftermarketDomainsForSale.com’ is a squatter then we are all squatters.

Aaron Goldman said...

Sorry guys, I'm not a domainer so I may have my terminology wrong. What I meant to say was that someone probably saw the way these guys were displaying their URL and bought it to capitalize on the misdirected traffic. Similar to 1-877-Kars-4-Kids.org. To clarify, is it only "squatting" when a trademark is involved?

NoDomainsForSale.com said...

Domain rights are not the same as trademark rights. However, where some professional registrants get into trouble (when trademarks are relevant to a domain) is by allowing ad feeds that are relevant to associated trademarks.

This was underscored by the August 21, 2008 decision by Wipo to award BME.com to BMEzine.com (a tattoo website) after the owner of BME.com placed tattoo ads on the landing page for BME.com. John Berryhill represented the registrant of BME.com.

The full case is:

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2008/d2008-0882.html