.UK V2 - The Losers

[Retired_Member42]

Will do... If people are willing to give me their decent .co.uk at 25% their asking price it'll be quite a long thread. 6-figures waiting here for people who wish to sell me decent domains at 25% of their asking price. Send them over!

 

[Retired_Member38]

30% offer here

 

[Nigel]

Will do... If people are willing to give me their decent .co.uk at 25% their asking price it'll be quite a long thread. 6-figures waiting here for people who wish to sell me decent domains at 25% of their asking price. Send them over!

please post only the domains that you buy that are predated by a .org.uk, .me.uk etc i.e. losers under nominet's plans

 

[namealot]

30% offer here

They only want £1,000,000.00 a steal at 333 k

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ialbums-t...?pt=UK_Computing_Services&hash=item3a81cd2e50

 

[GEaston]

Monkey's attitude is absolutely right. There's risk in every investment, and particularly so with domains. Anyone that thinks because they spent 20 grand on a domain and because they did that receive some sort of implicit guarantee is deluded.

The launch of .uk is going to make Nominet tens of millions and the govt collects 20% VAT on top. Those are the only reasons this will happen, but we could have all seen that years ago. In the scheme of things, it's not at all important.

 

[GreyWing]

Monkey's attitude is absolutely right. There's risk in every investment, and particularly so with domains. Anyone that thinks because they spent 20 grand on a domain and because they did that receive some sort of implicit guarantee is deluded.

Captain Obvious, Have you met any of these people who thought this way?

Anyway, some good sort of precedents here (not exact of course) but closest we can get, shows Nominet's previous policies towards "uk" being stuck on the end of something.

The majority were found to be confusingly similar.

http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes/resolving-domain-disputes/how-it-works/decisions-search

Click "domain name" and in the search box type "*uk.co.uk". It will bring up all the cases where someone has just stuck UK on the end of something (AsdaUK.co.uk).

-----------------------------

Jeez, then try it with "*.org.uk" and look at the number of DRS's from .co.uk owners.

 

[Edwin]

Anyway, some good sort of precedents here (not exact of course) but closest we can get, shows Nominet's previous policies towards "uk" being stuck on the end of something.

The majority were found to be confusingly similar.

There are 51 cases like that.

49 of them are very, very obvious cybersquatting (of the "glance at it and you KNOW the domain owner's in the wrong" variety)

The remaining 2 reasonably generic cases were decided 50/50 - and the loser sabotaged themselves by copying the complainant's site word for word!

So I don't believe you can draw ANY conclusions from the data (it neither supports nor weakens a particular position)

 

[GreyWing]

There are 51 cases like that.

49 of them are very, very obvious cybersquatting (of the "glance at it and you KNOW the domain owner's in the wrong" variety)

The remaining 2 reasonably generic cases were decided 50/50 - and the loser sabotaged themselves by copying the complainant's site word for word!

So I don't believe you can draw ANY conclusions from the data (it neither supports nor weakens a particular position)

The experts say that they were "confusingly similar" in all findings.

 

[Edwin]

The experts say that they were "confusingly similar" in all findings.

49 of those 51 findings are irrelevant from first word to last. If I take randomfamousbrandname and stick a UK on the end of it, I can GUARANTEE that the domain name randomfamousbrandnameuk.co.uk will be found confusingly similar. The confusion doesn't come from the UK part, it comes from the randomfamousbrandname part!

That leaves 2 cases. One as I said was self-sabotaging. The other was generic AND confusingly similar (happens all the time - people get trademarks for generic stuff) but because it was generic the complainant lost.

I am not saying that the results support my view. I'm saying that they don't support ANYONE's view! There's not enough real data to draw a conclusion of any kind.

 

[GreyWing]

49 of those 51 findings are irrelevant from first word to last. If I take randomfamousbrandname and stick a UK on the end of it, I can GUARANTEE that the domain name randomfamousbrandnameuk.co.uk will be found confusingly similar. The confusion doesn't come from the UK part, it comes from the randomfamousbrandname part!

That's what I'm trying to say though. The uk part has nothing to do with changing something from being confusing similar to being not confusingly similar.

 

[Stephen]

No famous?

49 of those 51 findings are irrelevant from first word to last. If I take randomfamousbrandname and stick a UK on the end of it, I can GUARANTEE that the domain name randomfamousbrandnameuk.co.uk will be found confusingly similar. The confusion doesn't come from the UK part, it comes from the randomfamousbrandname part!.......

Do you think that if it was not a "famous brand" and the poor domain owner went to the expense of a DRS they would win?

Made up name e.g. SolentCarHire.co.uk was trading for a few years
then somebody registered and set up competition SolentCarHireUK.co.uk

 

[Edwin]

Do you think that if it was not a "famous brand" and the poor domain owner went to the expense of a DRS they would win?

Made up name e.g. SolentCarHire.co.uk was trading for a few years
then somebody registered and set up competition SolentCarHireUK.co.uk

I think there's a good chance they'd lose the DRS. If two car hire companies in Solent were trading on SolentCarHire.co.uk and SolentCarHireUK.co.uk and there's no supporting information beyond that (no trademarks, nothing to indicate one is trying to sponge off the other's success - such as copying their logo, or elements of their site etc.) then I don't think it's safe to assume a win.

You can see that locally here - there are loads of very similar-sounding punting companies, for example:
cambridgepunters.com
cambridgepuntcompany.co.uk
thecambridgepuntingcompany.co.uk
puntingincambridge.com
punting-in-cambridge.co.uk
(there are several more, with an added word like "go" or "tours")

 

[aZooZa]

Didn't realise that Cambridge was quite such a community of potential buyers...

Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[foz]

Thanks for your work Murray.

 

[scooter]

If someone put a car insurance site on monkey.uk I'd just get a solicitor to say they were passing off, and look to take the domain from them.

You don't need a registered trademark for someone to be passing off.

I agree. When I state a mirror site, I do not mean an exact copy. I mean someone opens up on monkey.uk doing car insurance comparison. Their own logo, content etc.

If you do not own the trademark I doubt if they would be seen as passing off. If you do not own the trademark, both sites would be in infringement of the holders rights.

(I too am no legal expert but I do own 3 trademarks and I do know my rights regarding my marks)




Back to my original scenario, you have paid 20K for a cash loans site that is going to have another company selling exactly what you sell on the .uk and you are going to have a car insurance site selling exactly the same as monkey.co.uk but on the .uk.

At best you are going to be paying solicitor fees to try and get a cease and desist. All unnecessary expense, hassle and loss of business as monkey.uk is similar to your name. What happens if you DRS and you lose? My bet is, if you do not own the trademark, you will lose. I can see this happening all the time. It will be a free for all.
Is the whole focus from Nominet not now changed from required, trusted security to "we need to compete against other tld's. Therefore, competition is good

Hardly good for existing UK business. Would it be fair for a competitor to come along and not only compete directly against you but ultimately trample over you as time goes by? There can be only one daddy commercial name sapce for the UK. That is going to change if they go ahead.


If it goes ahead, i'll be there like the rest on this forum, slurping up what i can but imo it should never get the go ahead. It is damning for UK business.






.

 

[Retired_Member42]

The same can be said without the domain in the equation though as far as costs/legals/c&d etc... If someone copied monkey.co.uk on monkeyinsurance.co.uk with the same design/service etc that would be equally as defendable as monkey.uk

 

[scooter]

If you read what I stated, it is not a clone.

It is another company with a nice site of their own, own logo, own content. Nothing cloned.




.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I appreciate what you're saying but anyone has the right to do that now, regardless of .uk and in terms of losing customers to someone setting up monkey.uk, there are a whole load of other scenarios that would have the same effect business wise both now and after release of .uk.

If you're given a recommendation for a site, word of mouth for example, you're told the domain. The % of people who get told to go to monkey.co.uk and think oh wait, .uk is the primary extension, let's use that are slim. In the vast majority of cases, they're going to search Google for "Monkey" - a term anyone can rank for if they wanted to - with any domain.

More than likely, they're going to search Google for "monkey insurance", "monkey car insurance" etc which again anyone can rank for and there are a whole bunch of domains out there to target this.

I'm not saying that someone on monkey.uk will steal no business from .co.uk I'm just saying, in the real world, if someone wanted to do this, ranking their own site for monkey, monkey insurance, monkey car insurance etc would be a more profitable way to go about it.

 

[scooter]

I'm not saying they are setting up to steal anything either.

The will set up with their own Monkey logo and target the exact same keywords that the existing site targets. Thus the confusion and ultimately monkey.co.uk loses out as in the coming years .uk takes dominance in the commercial name space.

I know anyone can open up the same at present. I am talking about EMD's.

monkey.co.uk
monkey.org.uk
monkey.me.uk
ltd.uk etc.

All of a sudden here comes the big bad daddy of them all monkey.uk. "There can be only one" and this is it. You cannot get any better.

You go out in to the real world, outwith domaining and affiliating etc, i bet you will find most businesses on the co.uk will be mortified they are about to be shafted by the very people that are meant to look after their interests.

Thus, I see plenty litigation coming.


You are a developer;
How hard would it honestly be for the owner of monkey.uk to target monkey's keywords to rank well alongside?

http://www.google.co.uk/#gs_rn=18&g...50,d.d2k&fp=69d13d89a220156d&biw=1152&bih=759


I think it would be not very hard. So lets multiply that by the tens of thousands of potential names. A domainers dream. Great names handed on a plate with EMD already trading. An easy target.


The only winners from this are domainers and Nominet. Strange how the "scum" now become the accepted. Their original proposal no doubt was set at £20 not only as they have to sell the security angle, it it will have been set high to stop domainers purchasing and diluting the available names.

That's now thrown firmly out of the window with v2. We have now got a bargain bucket price of £5. They know they will have way more regged at this price.

Where is the morality in what they do? They don't give a shit. They just want to increase revenue.

I am completely against it. If it should go ahead then .co.uk HAS to be protected.


I'm off now to start compiling my "list".





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[Retired_Member42]

I agree with what you're saying. My point was that if someone was hell bent on creating a car insurance site with the sole intention of taking business from Monkey.co.uk there are equally, probably more so damaging ways to do it than with monkey.uk

If you're forming a new brand, you don't name it something that's taken in the same arena. You choose something else unless you specifically plan to take potential traffic from an existing site in the same arena. If that's your intention you can do that with or without .uk. People ranking for the above keywords is going to hurt the monkey.co.uk bottom line a lot more than a handful of word of mouth referrals mistyping the domain name.