Yahoo will likely win the dispute. Given the company’s vast web presence and many trademarks, how can the current owner justify his use of the name?

What Yahoo should be concerned with is why it didn’t register the name in the first place. The .tel TLD, like all other new extensions, mandated a sunrise period where trademark holders could register their names before the mainstream public. Obtaining the domain then rather than paying the National Arbitration Forum fees to get the name now would have saved the company quite a bit of money.

Source | Domain News
Photo | Flickr

Normally these sorts of issues are open-and-shut cases. Heineken is a registered trademark, and most people who register trademarked domains do so for profit, either to sell or the name or create a site of their own based off the brand. This case will be a bit different, however, because .tel domains don’t have websites. The name is only meant to be used as a place holder of sorts of contact information.

The site displays a short message in Spanish. Translated into English, it reads:

The love for beer will unite us. Soon we will have a forum to share our experiences with beer.

This the third WIPO dispute so far for the .tel registrar, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Source | Domain News Wire
Photo | Flickr

As Francois Amigorena, founder of KFA Technologies, put it:

SOS1.tel is probably the most ambitious .tel site ever created so far. It gathers the emergency phone numbers of 134 countries worldwide and takes full advantage of the competitive edges of .tel technology.

Right now more than four hundred emergency numbers are listed, including contact information for Alcoholics Anonymous, rape crisis hotlines, and poison control. Only three numbers are listed for the UK: 112, NHS Direct, and a hotline for reporting gas leaks. New numbers can be suggested, however.

It’s an interesting site, but it’s a shame that KFA Technologies didn’t buy SOS.tel and use that instead. The “1” at the end of the domain makes little sense and is hard to remember.

Source: PRNewsWire

The domain is owned by Russian Yuri A Ivanov and was registered on March 24, 2009.

The UDRP was set up by ICANN some time ago and applies to a number of extensions, including .com and .net. To bring a .tel into dispute, three criteria must be met:

• The domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights;
• The registrant does not have any rights or legitimate interests in the domain name; and
• The registrant registered the domain name and is using it in “bad faith.”

UDRP was used by Madonna in 2000 to obtain Madonna.com from its owner.

How events unfold will be interesting because .tel isn’t like other domains. Dot-tel names are used for communications purposes and aren’t meant to be used with full-scale websites or online advertising. It will be hard to prove that Ivanov is using the name in bad faith as there is no content on it.

Source: Domain Name Wire

Telnic CEO Khashayar Mahdavi had quite a bit to say about the event:

This is a truly remarkable milestone considering current economic conditions and with the attention of the world on global events, but proves that a simple but compelling service under the control of the individual has significant potential. As early adopters start using the .tel as their single point of contact, more and more individuals and businesses are seeing that it’s an incredibly useful way to manage the complexity of communications choices in one single place online.

Unlike typical domains, .tel names are tied directly to a DNS system instead of an IP address. They are designed for publishing contact information like phone numbers and IM addresses and integrating them into other applications, such as VOIP.

Telnic has also been nominated for the 2009 World Technology Award in Communications Technology.

Telnic is the operator of the .tel domain, which was recently approved by ICANN and became available for registration in March. Unlike typical domains, .tel names are tied directly to a DNS system instead of IP addresses. They are designed for publishing contact information like phone numbers and IM addresses and integrating them into other applications, such as VOIP. Telnic does not intend for .tel to be used with websites. A number of registrars offer .tel names. The going price is around £15.

The winner of the award will be announced this July 15-16 at the World Technology Network Expo in New York. It is sponsored by the likes of TIME and Fortune, but interestingly, WTN charges to submit award nominations.