Numbers can be trademarks.
Who says numbers are always a safe and sound investment as domain names?
For the most part they are – unless they are trademarked.
Take for example the number 118500, it represents a mark of British Telecom, and a search engine making money to the telco.
Not only they own BT118500.com but 118500.com as well; the latter forwards to the former.
With that in mind, they went after the domain of a UDRP “favorite“, Yoyo Email Ltd, 118500.email.
The company has registered thousands of dot .Email domains, the majority being brands, products or corporate names; with dozens of lost UDRP cases, this is yet another one.
According to the decision:
“The Panel considers the Respondent’s embryonic business model of registering thousands of third party trade marks as domain names under the .email generic Top-Level Domain (“gTLD”), without authorisation from the trade mark owners, in order to set up an email directory and certification service, also without authorisation from the trade mark owners, clearly amounts to bad faith registration and use under paragraph 4(b)(ii) of the Policy.”
The domain 118500.email was thus ordered to be transferred to British Telecom. For the full text of this UDRP, click here.
At this point, just seeing the Registrant’s name is enough information to know how it ends.