The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has filed a UDRP against the premium, aged domain name, ABC.net.
Registered in 1995, ABC.net has been in the possession of a Canadian domain investor, Beautiful Domains.
There is no track record of a sale for the domain, and the current registrant appears to have held the domain since at least 2000 – historical WHOIS data is kindly provided by DomainTools.
The Complainant in this UDRP that was filed at the WIPO two days ago, operates from ABC.net.au.
According to Wikipedia:
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s national broadcaster founded in 1929. It is currently principally funded by direct grants from the Australian government, but is expressly independent of government and partisan politics. The ABC plays a leading role in journalistic independence and is fundamental in the history of broadcasting in Australia.
This will be an interesting case to watch, as the domain ABC.net has been offered for sale by its registrant, since at least 2016. ABC is a very common three letter acronym, with tens of thousands of uses in the corporate world.
What a crazy UDRP case. This should be slapped with an automatic RDNH. These big corporations should learn the value of domains and be ready to pay fair market price for them instead of trying to hijack them through UDRP. Something has to be done to curb this kind of abuse.
Update – The UDRP decision favors the Respondent, but no RDNH finding: https://domaingang.com/domain-law/abc-net-udrp-decision-the-complainants-request-should-be-denied/