Sears loses dispute for my-gofer domains
What do the domains my-gofer.biz,.info.,.net,.org,and .info have in common? Sears Brands, LLC does not have rights to any of them. They apparently thought they did, however, and took the case before an arbitrator. MyGofer is the chosen name and trademark of Sears’ shopping service. Their main website is mygofer.com Sears does own the legitimate MYGOFER trademark.
My-gofer.org is a website for Stage/Film/TV where performers can showcase their talents, and it is a legitimate business. According to ICANN rules of its domain dispute policy, a complainant must satisfy three elements in order to prove that a domain should be transferred to them: 1. Trademark or common law mark,that the domain is confusingly similar to a business name or trademark 2. that the respondent has no reasonable right to the domain, and 3. that the respondent operated in bad faith.
While the first element was undeniable, even by the respondent, the second two were equally deniable. The panel ruled that the respondent was using the two of the domains for legitimate business and had plans to use the others for the same business, which is not in direct competition with Sears or its MyGofer website. Furthermore, there was no evidence that they acted in bad faith, thus no cybersquatting. In this case, Sears loses.
Source: UDRPsearch
Photo: Flickr
Tag: business, cybersquatting, dispute, domains, icann, trademark, website
The article covers this case pretty well, but the writer mis-spelled our website names. The correct names are my-gofer.org (active) and my-gofer.net (presently parked)… you just left out the dashes. The Sears sites have no dashes.
It is hard enough to get a new and unique business going without being accused of thievery by one of the “big boys”. This battle has cost us, but we are still kicking.
If anyone out there would like to contact us (we currently need some sweat-equity programmer and promoter ‘partners’) just go to and send us a message from the “contact us” page. or send an email to ‘Gofer’ at
Follow up: That was go to “my-gofer.org” and send us a note from the contact page. (See we do typos, too.)
Thank you for the corrections. Hopefully that will help you out a little. If we can do anything else for you, let me know.