With the assistance of Ari Goldberger and his ESQwire.com law firm, Nat Cohen’s Telepathy, Inc was victorious in its WIPO defense of the generic domain name Geometric.com. The case was filed by an Indian-based software company whose name contains the generic term “geometric.”

There was a dissenting panelist in this case, who stated his belief that the company employs “a conscious strategy to register the domain name for eventual sale to a potential complainant or competitor, to prevent a trademark registrant from reflecting its name in a corresponding domain name, to disrupt a competitor’s business or to attract Internet users for commercial gain by confusing use of the domain name.”

In my humble opinion, Telepathy owns a tremendous portfolio of generic domain names (including Pennsylvania.com and Maryland.com), and they are in the process of developing its names. It takes a considerable amount of time and effort for each project, and it shouldn’t be assumed that there is bad intent simply because a domain name isn’t developed into a full website.

Fortunately for Telepathy, this panelist was in the minority, and the company was permitted to keep its generic domain name. I find it frustrating that some companies file a WIPO for a generic domain name simply because that particular term is contained within their business name. It seems like they are making a business decision that it is worth the gamble that they could potentially acquire the name at a lower cost via WIPO rather than contacting the owner to pay market value for a generic domain name. There is a good chance they will lose, but if they happen to prevail, they could conceivably save thousands of dollars.

In the WIPO case of Geometric.com, the responding company probably paid a few thousand dollars to defend its domain name, but it was necessary, as previous WIPO decisions may be cited as a history of bad faith. Even if the name wasn’t worth the cost to defend it, the responding company is almost forced to defend the name as a protective measure for other generic names in its portfolio.

Congrats to Nat and Ari, two respected people in the domain industry.

Top Notch Domains, LLC, a Nashua, New Hampshire based domain investment and development company, is pleased to announce the recent acquisition of the domain name EasternCaribbean.com.  The company intends to develop an informational website focusing on travel to the islands of the Eastern Caribbean.

“This is a fantastic geographic domain name, and I am thrilled that we were able to acquire it,” said Top Notch Domains, President Elliot Silver.  ”Over 11 million people will take a cruise this year, and many of them will end up in Eastern Caribbean hotspots like Barbados, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas.  EasternCaribbean.com is a domain name that aligns with our growth strategy.”

Top Notch Domains, LLC owns domain names such as Devices.com, Customs.com, VirginiaMortgages.com, and many other valuable generic domain names.

In a blog post on November 11th, Jay Westerdal asks his blog readers for their opinions on whether DomainTools’ controversial Registrant Search tool should be taken down. Although I think it is a cool tool, I believe I have a strong case for why it should be taken down, and my case is supported by evidence provided by Jay in this morning’s blog post, “Chameleon typo squatters.”

In Jay’s newest post, he discusses how some people attempt to mask their identity by registering domain names using other companies’ registration information, with the only difference being the admin contact email address. Jay cites the example of the domain name GoogleWishes.com, which appears to be owned by Google, but uses a different contact email address.

With the Registrant Search tool, this domain name would presumably be listed in Google’s list of domain names, when someone performs a Registrant Search using “Google” as a query. Because the email address differs from the actual email address used by Google in their domain registrations, this domain name does not appear to be owned by Google. However, GoogleWishes.com would appear in the list along with other Google properties such as Google.com, GoogleMaps.com, GoogleVideo.com, and many more.

I know you can whittle down your results by entering more information (such as the usual admin contact email), but if a person ordered the results based on what appears in the Whois.sc/Google.com listing - (Registrant Search: “Google Inc.” owns about 8,211 other domains), this name would probably appear.

Although the domain name GoogleWishes.com would probably not hurt the image of Google, a devious person could severely impact a competitor’s or opponent’s image by registering pornographic or trademark infringing domain names in someone else’s name. Unless a careful examination is made of each name in the list, the Registrant Search tool could be damaging to the victim of a “chameleon typo squatter.”