Days after Facebook.com won a UDRP decision to gain ownership of Facebok.com , a large batch of “less stellar” Facebook.com typo domains are being deleted Wednesday. Most of these domains showed an expiration date that was further off, so in all likelihood the owner of these domains issued a forced registry deletion in order to cut the liability.

The domains deleting Wednesday include :

facebobk.com
facebobook.com
facebokook.com
faceboodk.com
facemook.com
faebok.com
fancebook.com
facebookbook.com
facebooook.com

It’s highly likely that these names will end up being grabbed and auctioned at one of the top auction spots like Snapnames.com or Namejet.com. Several of the above names already have multiple bidders at Namejet.

Facebook has been making aggressive legal moves on companies that use the word “book” or “face” in domains. Teachbook.com received a great deal of the press surrounding these “David vs Goliath” suits.  Robin Wauters weighed in with his thoughts on these overreaching moves at TechCrunch and Erick Schonfeld points out that Facebook is even trying to trademark the word Face.

With overreaching bullying tactics like these, I’m 100% positive Facebook will be aggressive toward more obvious names like these deleting names, possibly even stopping any auction before it begins.

Gavel By Joe Gratz (Flickr)

The Valuate.com service by Domaining.com‘s founder Francois Carrillo has now added a trademark checker functionality, which automatically scans the submitted domains for potential trademark claims. The service was built by the Estibot team.

Francois suggests trying those samples if you have trouble coming up with domains to try:

mikrosoft.com
googleads.com
iphonestore.com

He also points out that the following things should be kept in mind when using the service:

• EVERY word is trademarked (ex: apple, orange, great, elephant) so it’s pointless to have a TM scanner that checks every TM because 99% of domains will have some generic TM.
• TM checker only works on BIG fortune 1,000 companies + their products (ex: Microsoft => xbox => halo) + smaller industry companies (ex: Verisign, godaddy)
• TM checker optimized for companies that have history of suing domainers (ex: Verizon, Viacom, Facebook, Twitter, etc)
• It’s NOT [a] comprehensive TM check. Always consult good TM lawyer for [a] real analysis. It’s only good for identifying obvious TMs in portfolio.
• It detects typos. You can even adjust probability match (default is 65%, but you can bring to even 30% to make very broad).

As we reported previously, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer let more than 50 of their .org domain names expire in March 2009. The names were brought to DNN’s attention as they appeared on a SnapNames auction list . After expiring several of the domains appear to have been registered by SnapNames and now are in the ownership of Pfizer (such as Viagra.org) However, several names did expire and end up in the hands of other new registrants.   Two of these names, Pfizer.org and Celebrex.org (a Pfizer brand), ended up in the hands of Samir Kumar.

A recent UDRP filing however has stopped Kumar.  Pfizer prevailed in the arbitration and the names have been ordered to be transferred back, although whois records still indicate Kumar’s information and contain a “domain for sale” notation on their records.

Based on the whois history of Viagra.org, Pfizer.org and Celebrex.org (only 3 of the dozens of .org names that expired) , previous to these domains expiring, the domain portfolio was under the managment of a brand/domain protection and managment company, CSC Corporate Domains. Interestingly, the domains now appear to be controlled under MarkMonitor’s services, a competitor of CSC.

From time to time DNN publishes guest posts from industry experts. We received this piece from attorney Paul Keating today and thought it would be worth sharing and discussing.  Let us know what you think .

A panel of respected WIPO arbitrators recently issued their decision in Airborne Systems North America and Airborne Systems Group, Ltd. v. Virtual Point, Inc. (“airbornesystems.com”). The decision represents a further erosion of fairness in the UDRP procedure and highlights the alarming tendency among panelists to ignore both the clear language of the UDRP and the applicable laws governing the validity of trademark rights. (more…)

Days after our post that social media user names are becoming more like domain names, an issue over a Twitter user name has piqued the interest of an internet heavy-weight.  According to a seesmic post from Kevin Rose, creator of Digg.com,  Social media company Room214 has requested that the user, a school teacher, who is using @room214 give them the user name.   The company Room 214 uses the Twitter user name @room_214 and wants the better name now.

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, reverse domain name hijacking is defined on wikipedia as “the practice of inequitably unseating domain name registrants by accusing them of violating weak or non-existent trademarks related to the domain name.”  In essence what we seem to be seeing here is a similar case of someone trying to unseat a Twitter user, or a case of reverse user name hijacking on Twitter.  According to Stepan Mazurov of Room 214 “once it goes through . . . we have to protect it”, which seems to imply that they plan to move forward with requesting Twitter give them the user name.

Rose weighed in on this issue and posted a Seesmic video opening up the discussion. As of this writing, there were 12 video replies posted back with varying opinions on the matter, none seem to be from a legal expert, yet.  We suspect more to come as this issue rises to the surface.  Chris Hadley points out the similarities user names have with domain names and how users losing Twitter accounts can become a real nightmare. “What protection do we have over our Twitter accounts . . .  if this guy loses his Twitter account to this company, how do you protect yourself”.

Twitter’s policy states in barebones terms that they reserve the right to take user names and give them to another entity :

We reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.

Under this policy what happens when you have a generic user name and someone has a trademark on that term, or if your company name or even intials are the same or as another company name ?  There are multiple trademarks for the word United, so which user has the “rights” to that user name under this vague policy?  It seems to be whomever Twitter feels like giving it to.  Will the Twitter account @bmw be given to the auto maker when they come knocking ?

DNN issued our view on the matter in our previous post and it reflects a sentiment similar to what Hadley said

“Just like domain name owners, social media users don’t want the hassle and uncertainty of having to wonder whether their name will be taken away.  Surely, the social media companies don’t want to be in the middle of the disputes either.  Refering to the history of domain names as an example, it would be a safe wager that lawsuits and arbitration over user names is right around the corner.  It would be best for these social media companies to get ahead of the issue as soon as possible and make the user names even more like domain names by providing some level of security and stability to their users.”

In a case that is well over a year old, Vulcan Golf and other plaintiffs in the “Vulcan vs Google” case where handed a set back this week as the court denied their class certification.  The court’s decision can be found at this link on Docutek (pdf).  DNN caught wind of this news through Eric Goldman’s blog where he provides a summary of the the court’s decision and it’s implications.

” The court rejects class certification for the trademark infringement and Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act claims because the individual questions of fact predominate over the common questions of law.” (more…)