Comments on: Melanie Oudin .com: Protecting a Brand

By: Isa Lube

Isa Lube — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:24:29 +0000

I love the shoes and her tennis games as well

By: Elliot

Elliot — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:44:55 +0000

@ Mike

Yeah – smart thinking by them!

My name was registered many years ago. I should blog about the lost $$$ that could be spent buying domain names that you can’t sell for sentimental reasons. I could have paid $1k for my .com domain name, but I didn’t do it… there’s more to the story than that, but I didn’t want to have $$$$ locked up in a domain name I could/would never sell.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:36:39 +0000

MelanieOudin.com is actually a live site.. not sure when they put the content though.

I’m kinda surprised you don’t owe your own name….

By: Elliot

Elliot — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:55:55 +0000

Very true – all depends on usage. I’ve seen UDRP cases go both ways for full names. Oftentimes people (politicians especially) believe they are more famous than they really are.

First and last names are definitely defensible – well, perhaps the Michelman.com case (I believe that’s the spelling) is the exception. Tucows and NetIdentity have both defended many surnames.

By: Acro

Acro — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:52:01 +0000

Owning domains of full names of individuals may or may not cause problems, depending on how unique they are. The names of famous people are most likely infringing and such registrations are risky. On the other hand, first names in any TLD are good investments, e.g. in this case I have Melanie.biz