Qant.as, a domain that resembles you know, the Australian airline Qantas, was sold for $1.35 million USD. The seller, Dominic Holland, said in a statement, “The domain name Qant.as could be snapped up by a competitor so damage to Qantas’s business could be in the millions of dollars.”

The .as ccTLD is used by American Samoa. Personally, I think the idea that this domain could hurt Qantas is absurd. While the name does spell the name of the airline, most Internet users still aren’t comfortable with including the extension as part of a spelled name. No one would confuse it for the real thing.

There is some question as to whether it violates the airline’s trademark or not, but since extensions usually aren’t considered part of the domain name, I don’t think Qant.as is in violation. Either way, the buyer got a horrible deal.

Source | The Domains
Photo | Flickr

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One common issue new website owners run into is the hosting of copyrighted content. You may want to host a music video on your site, offer a song for download, or use another site’s image. Is this allowed? Unless you have permission from the copyright holder to use the content, your web host could remove it at any time.

Keep in mind that copyright infringement is illegal and although hosts aren’t responsible for their customer’s actions, they can be held liable for not putting an end to illicit activity in a timely manner. If your host gets a complaint from a copyright holder, you could find yourself kicked off their servers and out any deposits or fees paid.

This is the case for most North American and European hosts. Web hosting companies in developing countries are often much less stringent about the enforcement of copyright law.

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American Airlines has won a dispute it filed with the National Arbitration Forum over the domain advantagemiles.com. AA claimed the domain was being used in bad faith and was confusing similar to its AAdvantage frequent flyer program.

Whereas some domain transfer requests seem meaningless, I think the airline had good reason to demand the name. “Advantagemiles.com” sounds very legitimate to me and probably confused a number of American Airlines customers.

That being said, let’s just hope the airline chooses to improve the quality of its flights from now on instead of its domain portfolio.

Photo | Flickr

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Two large companies, Disney and Coca-Cola, have won domain disputes this week.

Disney won the names diseny.com and dsiney.com after filing a trademark complaint with the National Arbitration Forum. The registration of these names clearly constitutes typosquatting. Because the owner did not want to take part in the proceedings, Disney won.

Coca-Cola also won cokerewards2009.com after filing a dispute with the WIPO. The beverage company claims the registrant was using the name in bad faith to impersonate Coke and collect personal information from customers.

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Someone at Facebook headquarters just said, “Uh oh.” The social media site announced a new feature this morning: Facebook Zero. Slated for launch in a few weeks, Zero is a text-only version of Facebook available for free on mobile phones. The problem? The company forgot to register FacebookZero.com.

After Facebook Zero was announced, a domainer in China picked up the name. Facebook had intended to use the URL zero.facebook.com for the service all along, but not having the domain is a huge disadvantage.

Luckily for Facebook, it can probably get the name back simply by filing a complaint with an arbitration panel. But it could have saved itself a lot of pain and agony by simply registering the name in the first place.

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In yet another dispute regarding its Bing.com search engine, corporate giant Microsoft has won the domain wapbing.net.

The Redmond company claimed the name violated its trademark for “Bing” and filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum. Microsoft also claimed that the registrant intended for the domain to be deliberately confusing and was thus using it in bad faith.

According to the case documents, the name was registered by Xin Net Technology Corporation, a Chinese domain register notorious for its spam activities.

Source | Domain News
Photo | Flickr

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According to a story published on TechCrunch today, Yahoo has filed a trademark for Y.com. Why is this so odd?

First of all, Yahoo does not own the domain Y.com. In fact, no one does. The majority of .com names under three characters are reserved by the IANA and have been unavailable for registration since 1993. Perhaps Yahoo thinks the domain will some day become available?

Finally, even if Yahoo gets the trademark, that does mean the company will ever get the domain. The trademark only applies to search sites. If someone were to register it and develop another type of site unrelated to Yahoo, the use of the domain would be perfectly legal. Not to mention that in arbitration cases, panels do not consider the extension to be part of the trademark.

Photo | Flickr

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MasterCard has won a domain dispute filed with the WIPO involving the domain mastercard-brasil.com.The name has been taken from Pattishall McAuliffe, the registrant, and transferred to the firm.

In its complaint, MasterCard claimed the name violated its trademark and that the registrant was using it to collect the personal information of customers who had actually intended to visit the real MasterCard site.

It’s clear that the domain violates MasterCard’s trademark, but I doubt that McAuliffe was collecting personal information because according to the case documents, the name was inactive. How can you collect information from a domain without a website?

Photo | Flickr

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Tech giant Microsoft won a dispute filed with the National Arbitration Forum over the domain bingnews.org this week. The company alleged that the name, which was registered by Prabhjot Singh, violated the trademark of its Bing search engine.

Microsoft won the case because of its trademark on “Bing” and because the registrant did not respond, but was this domain really worth going after? It is true that companies must pursue violations in order to keep their marks, but is going after each and every one necessary? In this instance, Singh didn’t appear to be using the name in bad faith. The domain itself isn’t very good, either. I doubt either party could profit from it.

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When NBA star Chris Bosh sued cybersquatter Luis Zavala over the domain Hoopology.com, the judge awarded him the name plus $120,000 in damages. Because of Zavala’s likely inability to pay the judgment, however, the judge has handed over his entire domain portfolio to Bosh. It consists of some 800 sports and celebrity-related names.

What does the basketball player intend to do with the names? He says he only wanted his domain back and is willing to transfer any of other 800 names– many of which infringe on the rights of other stars– to their rightful owners for free. Granted, there have been mutterings by some domainers that Bosh’s intentions are less than honest, but we’ll see what happens.

Photo | carlosan

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