Flippa-flopping: Domain attorney guest post all while trademarks are being listed

Trademark domains are being sold on Flippa, all the time.

Sounds remarkably ironic that Flippathe Australian marketplace for trading domains and web sites – is hosting a guest post by Zak Muscovitch on trademark and copyright matters.

Time and again we pointed out to Flippa support that they are allowing blatant trademark violations to be listed for sale at Flippa.com

After our first few reports of such listings, Flippa started to respond with a standard cookie-cutter reply:

“In regards to the listing that you have reported, if we receive a DMCA notice from Facebook, we will cancel and remove the listing immediately. The listing may be reinstated if the seller lodges a Counter-DMCA notice disputing the claimed infringement.”

Unfortunately, it’s not only famous marks such as Facebook, iPhone or Microsoft that are being violated by sellers on Flippa.

In its latest sales newsletter, under the headline “Top Sales Last 14 Days“, Flippa lists the domain name MrBetfair.co.uk as one of the highest sales on its marketplace. The domain was sold for $45,000 according to its listing, which – conveniently – hid the URL during the auction.

The sale of MrBetfair.co.uk is a mockery of the established web site Betfair.co.uk and Betfair.com; the latter enterprise possesses BOTH a British trademark for “Betfair” as can be seen at the British Intellectual Property Office and another at the USPTO in the USA.

In our opinion, the article by Mr. Zak Muscovitch – an established IP attorney by all means – is thus being used as “smoke and mirrors” by Flippa – giving the impression that somehow Flippa polices its marketplace for trademark violations; in fact, Flippa issues the above standard disclaimer claiming they aren’t responsible for these user-submitted listings.

The problem with this type of thinking is that once a trademark holder finds out about their intellectual property being traded on Flippa, they might pursue extensive damages from Flippa for allowing such domain listings in the first place.

When Flippa users report such obvious trademark violations, Flippa should react proactively, removing them from its marketplace.

We would welcome the expert opinion of Mr. Zak Muscovitch on this subject.

 

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