When it comes down to listing domains with trademark issues, newcomer domain venue FreeMarket.com appears to be mimicking Flippa‘s early days.
Both domain marketplaces have a fair share of domains that contain corporate names and famous marks, such as Microsoft, iPhone and Apple.
FreeMarket.com does not charge for its listings, but it has only been around for a few days, after it spawned off from Freelancer.com. Therefore, we’ll assume that it has yet to show its full potential when it comes down to being flooded by trademark violations.
Searching for “Applewatch” on FreeMarket.com returned 10 domains that contained the string:
“AppleWatch” domains on FreeMarket.com.
Meanwhile, on Flippa.com we found 15 such domains:
“AppleWatch” domains listed for sale on Flippa.com
In the beginning, Flippa maintained an approach of listing any type of domain name regardless of its obvious trademark violations; later on, it changed its approach to maintaining an active list of famous trademarks that raise an alert with its domain listing services.
Still, domain listings such as this obvious Microsoft violation appear to slip through, on Flippa.com.
There seems to be no such filtration implemented on FreeMarket.com, at this time.
Imho, getting rid of that cybersquatting junk should be a top priority for matketplaces. It definitely sends a wrong message to legit buyers, especially for those who are not familiar with the domain industry. Ridiculous.
If we can see the problem ……why can’t they?
Agreed; thanks for pointing these out to us. We don’t always catch (all) of them…
Kevin – You guys have done a lot of improvements over the years, I think the tm issue is handled well, currently.