A customized landing page can help with cybersquatting claims - Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

Andrew Allemann 4 Comments November 4, 2024

Explaining generic or descriptive uses of a domain name could help defend it in a cybersquatting dispute.

When it comes to UDRP cybersquatting cases, what’s on your for sale landing page can matter.

Complainants often point to a domain being listed for sale as proof that the domain was registered in bad faith. This isn’t necessarily the case, though. People can register generic, descriptive, or short domains for resale without violating the policy.

One way to show your intentions behind a domain is to explain potential uses on the for sale page.

For example, in a case (pdf) just decided in favor of the registrant of afer.com, the panelist noted that the registrant mentioned a message on the landing page about descriptive uses of the domain.

Based on the Wayback Machine, it’s not clear if this message was there when the case was filed. But a message like this could help.

The panelist didn’t reference this message in the bad faith section of the decision, although it might have influenced her decision based on the rest of the decision.

Two services that currently allow custom descriptions are Atom and Efty. Atom creates AI-generated descriptions, which could potentially create issues (kind of like how pay-per-click algorithms do).

Dan.com allowed descriptive statements like this. GoDaddy does not.

It might be worth writing descriptions explaining the generic or descriptive use of a domain name, especially for your more valuable domains. I caution that that isn’t a way to cover up true cybersquatting. Explaining away your registration of coca-cola-something .com isn’t going to work.

Categories: Policy & Law Tags: Atom, Etsy, landing pages, udrp