Meta, Inc., the umbrella company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, filed several UDRP cases to defend its “Meta” mark.
Not long after the company’s domain rebranding, enterprising domainers rummaged the entire word dictionary, adding “meta” left and right.
In February 2023, Meta began testing out Meta Verified, a subscription bundle for its Meta creators. Meta Verified was then launched officially in June of 2023.
Since December, Meta has filed a number of UDRP cases against domain names that contain the “MetaVerified” keywords:
buymetaverified.com
metaverified.site
metaverified.shop
metaverified.pro
metaverified.link
metaverified.info
metaverified.help
metaverified.club
metaverified.cc
metaverified.biz
metaverified.asia
metaverified.store
facebookmetaverified.com
metaverified.com.cn
metaverified.cn
metaverified.nl
metaverified.com.cn
metaverified.cn
metaverified.us
While some of these are still active, several have ended with the panel’s decision favoring Meta.
Interestingly, the most important domain did not end up in a UDRP: MetaVerified.com.
Registered in late 2022 and thus prior to the official announcement by Meta/Facebook about its product, that domain belonged to HugeDomains but has been in the possession of Meta since February 22, 2023.
It’s clear that Meta acquired the domain from HugeDomains, for a price that was never recorded, despite the fact that the transaction completed on Sedo.com. 🙂
