Smelling the .CO Millions with reserved domains.
One of the biggest .CO domains reserved by the .CO Registry is no other than traffic magnet destination for 2010 – Chatroulette!
Yes, that’s correct: the domain Chatroulette.co was not pre-released and certainly not offered during the landrush.
Bummer.
Instead, the .CO Registry reserved the domain, apparently aiming to auction it later on – preferably when the Chatroulette creator – cash-strapped Russian teenager Andrey Ternovskiy – gets some serious investor’s money.
Regardless, the .CO is missing out on some serious typo traffic right now, as it’s not enabled.
Meanwhile, traffic – according to Alexa.com – is skyrocketing for CamRoulette.com – the domain name that’s entangled in some odd legal situation over an allegedly unsatisfied contract.
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Why? The registry has no right to auction ChatRoulette.co.
“ChatRoulette” has become a famous brand where only ChatRoulette has the exclusive right to that domain.
A famous brand? Care to share with us the trademark? Mere use of a name in commerce does not give exclusive rights to a term. In fact, a pending trademark at the USPTO appears to be unrelated to the Russian teenager’s initiative.
Scam scam scam…..
dot com will trump any extensions.
They have common law rights.
They don’t need a formal trademark in order to assert exclusive rights.
The pending TM you mentioned should be easily opposable.
UDRPtalk – I’m not a lawyer but I’ve seen the “easily opposable” notion collapse several times.
Think about it: a 17 year old Russian geek with no funding and a $10,000 loan from his parents launches a home-based project. Do you think he will be going after a Swiss corporation to oppose their application for the mark?
There are hundreds of “Chatroulette” sites right now, both in terms of name similarity or in terms of technology. When trying to launch a trademark or a patent one must proactively seek that. The term Chatroulette is taken in every TLD including most ccTLDs.
Dear Lucius,
The pending TM at the USPTO is most likely related to the 17 year old since they reference “chatrooms” in their goods and services.
If they are unrelated, then if the USPTO TM examiner does his job right, it will never be approved since the 17 year old’s usage came first.
Furthermore, just because the 17 year old won’t go after COinternet for any wrongful potential auction of chatroulette.co doesn’t mean that COinternet has a legal right to auction it.
Sincerely,
UDRPtalk
UDRPtalk – I know for a fact it is not the Russian guy behind the TM application. In fact, it’s a competing service, using similar technology and a different URL; in essence, they are taking over the legal gap left behind by the Chatroulette team. Right now, they’re rushing to get the TM with no sign of opposition.
Lucius,
But how can you assume that the USPTO examiner won’t reject the application?
It doesn’t need to be opposed for the TM to be refused.
-UDRPtalk
UDRPtalk – I am not predisposing the tm application decision; simply stating that the tm application is unrelated to Chatroulette.com
ChatRoulette need to trademark in all countries in the world to get full trademark protection.
It’s going to be difficult to trademark when it’s commonly used by ordinary countries citizens in the world.