People often say you shouldn’t develop a domain name just to develop it. You should either have a passion for the topic or have knowledge about the industry, as a development project is difficult, and if you don’t enjoy that business, you are going to have regrets. While that advice may be 100% accurate, I think high value domain names need to be secured, and it appears that development may be the best way to secure them. After the recent LH.com UDRP decision, I would advise people to develop the domain names they can’t afford to lose via UDRP.

Yes, the chances of losing a name via UDRP are still arguably slim, but with each decision like the LH.com decision, it becomes easier and easier for companies to cite other similar cases when they file a UDRP for a generic domain name. I do understand the difficulty of developing all of your domain names if you have hundreds of names. I would argue that if you do have hundreds of domain names, you are probably at the greatest risk of losing your names – even if they are generic. In fact, the LH.com decision cited:

“…Respondent’s business model involves the indiscriminate acquisition and use of as many such domain names as possible. The traditional analyses of the rights to or legitimate interests element should not apply in gross when a registrant is not seeking to use any particular domain name to conduct business, is not otherwise known by that name, and has no interest in the nature of the transferor’s rights there from.“

Trust me, I know how hard it is to develop domain names. I haven’t started soliciting advertisers for Lowell.com, and as such, I am only making a few dollars from the hotel and job boards at the moment, but I know with optimization will come advertising dollars. This is a full scale business I have developed, rather than just a developed domain name. There are plenty of options out there to develop where you don’t need to spend a ton of time or money. If I had more high value domain names, I would be developing all of them quickly.

Incidentally, check out Salinas.com to see a site that was fairly quickly put together.  Maybe I could generate a little more revenue if it was parked, but as it is, I have closed close to 25 hotel reservations in less than 2 months, have generated good revenue from the job board, and have a nice deal with the photographer. Once I develop the domain name more fully (in a couple of months), it will look even better.

The decision has been reached in the LH.com UDRP filing which pitted Future Media Architects up against airline giant Lufthansa. Unfortunately for the Respondent FMA, the domain was ordered to be transferred to Lufthansa, which seems to be a terrible decision, in my opinion. How one company can claim the rights to owning a two letter domain name is beyond me. According to AcronymFinder.com, there are 38 listed meanings for the “LH” acronym, and there are countless businesses who have LH as their initials.

This case is far from over, however, as FMA filed a preemptive lawsuit against Lufthansa in case they lost the domain name via UDRP. It will be interesting to see how this case gets resolved, but as of now, Lufthansa won the first battle for LH.com.

It’s times like these that I wish the Internet Commerce Association had more support and was able to help domain registrants fight large corporate entities. At the moment, we are like a herd of deer being chased down by a hungry lion. The individual chances of one of us getting picked off by the lion are slim in a herd of hundreds of deer, but the likelihood of one deer getting killed is great.

Friends, we need to be like the Water Buffalo in this thrilling video. While the pride of Lions (and even the hungry crocodile) are trying to kill a young water buffalo, the herd returns to save him. As domain investors, we need to put individual squabbles aside and realize that a united and active group of self-protective domain owners can help stave off large corporations. The Snowe Bill was just one thing that threatens our industry. In the months ahead, we will certainly face other obstacles, and it is important that we help each other.

We are a small industry, but we wield tremendous power. Individually, it might be difficult to take on the wealthy corporate powers who want nothing more than to take generic domain names for a song. As a united group, we can stop them. It’s time to stop looking after our individual assets alone and to unify and help protect the domain investment industry.