What happens when one doesn’t have assistance in making decisions related to domain names? They make bad choices.
Two days ago we wrote about the saga of The Wyvern’s Tale – a games shop in Asheville, North Carolina – that experienced the unfortunate event of having their dot com squatted upon by the competition.
Despite pointing out a timeline that clearly shows Hillside Games of Asheville, NC as intentionally grabbing the domain name TheWyvernsTale.com to undermine their competition, the folks behind The Wyvern’s Tale balked at the cost of launching a UDRP.
According to the Facebook page:
“After researching the costs involved in disputing the domain, we determined that it would be pointless. Filing a dispute with ICANN is $1300 for 1 domain (and even more for all 6), and a lawsuit is even costlier, let alone the time involved. To pursue those avenues just to get a domain would be an absurd waste of our resources.”
That’s all fine and dandy, despite the fact that a seasoned IP attorney might have strong-armed the bullying squatters with notions of further litigation that would be in the $100,000 range for copyright infringement.
The Wyvern’s Tale folks continue:
“We have registered www.thewyvernstaleavl.com and we intend to use that for all purposes going forward. For now, it just redirects to this Facebook page, but we’ll have an actual web site in the future, so go ahead and bookmark it!”
And that’s where the drums roll.
Not only did these kind folks failed to register the domain that matches their corporate name, not only they are not going to pursue it in court, but they went ahead with registering an even worse, long-tail variant: TheWyvernsTaleAvl.com (Avl is the airport code for Asheville).
This thoughtless choice further steers traffic to the web site of their competition.
Simply amazing.
why can’t we all just get along?