Company loses challenge over derogatory domain names.
Morgan Stanley has lost a challenge at National Arbitration Forum for the domain names screwedbymorganstanleysmithbarney.com and screwedbymorganstanley.com.
On the surface this seems like a classic case of a gripe site. In general, you are allowed to use domain names that include trademarks if the person going to the URL will clearly know the domain name isn’t owned by the trademark holder based on the URL alone (and not the content of the page). That the domains have a “screwed by” prefix would qualify.
Yet there are a couple things interesting about this case. First, the domain owner planned to forward the domain names to its ScrewedByForums.com site yet hadn’t done that yet. As a result the domain names were showing registrar parked pages with ad links.
Second is the content the registrant planned to forward the domains to. If you visit screwedbyforums.com/morgan-stanley-smith-barney you’ll see that the page contains Google Adsense ads. A lot of panels have found that creating a gripe site that is monetized negates the free speech protection of gripe sites.
Ironically Morgan Stanley may have been better off waiting until the domains were forwarded to ScrewedByForums.com before filing its complaint. Then it could have argued that the respondent was using the domains for commercial benefit.
Instead, Morgan Stanley lost the case.
Kevin Ohashi says
I expect they will just file again?