They took my realsestate.com.au

[Timmy]

I don't get it. What's a f***ing Reals Estate?

If you are registering a name because it's a typo, whether it be generic or an established brand, you're being sneaky and quite frankly you just look like a scab - there are plenty of other ways to make money.

This isn't even a grey area, it's borderline ridiculous. Domaining is pretty simple, don't be lazy, read the rules - the same rules that would protect you if you were the owner of RealEstate.com.au.

Real Estate is a generic term, but I'm pretty sure RealEstate.com.au would have over 90% brand penetration by now. EVERYONE knows about it.

I understand this is meant to be a forum for people to openly discuss issues and get advice, but it seems of late, its the same shit regurgitated over and over because people don't want to read.

 

[DavidL]

Timmy, this is an important discussion.

1) Should auDA decide what constitutes a brand or not
2) If so should they decide whether that brand is being infringed
3) If they decide what should they do

It's not the typo aspect of it but the definition of a brand. You say Realestate.com.au has 90% brand penetration so they deserve to have their brand protected.

I'm not necessarily arguing against that but if you do that, you need to draw a line.

If they had 50% brand penetration would that make a difference. How about 10%?

If you advertised heavily your (very nice) website voucher.com.au do you think auDA should act against the owner of vouchers.com.au as it's just a parked page possibly profiting from your hard work?

What about if the owner of vouchers.com.au decided to spend millions until they were a household name and had '90% brand recognition'. If auDA popped your domain on the misspellings list how would you feel?

We all know that's not going to happen but this is a much bigger issue than the realestate.com.au example above.

auDA themselves are seeking help on this issue as more and more small businesses demand to have misspellings of their brands put on the list. They don't know where to draw the line.

 

[Timmy]

Personally I see that as apples and oranges, or more specifically singular vs plural.

My point was, if it's on the misspelled list, it's misspelled - no point whining.

Auda wouldn't have made the rule on line 234432 to cater for RealEstate.com.au because they want to look after big business. Besides - the point is that the line is drawn - "you can not have these names."

RealsEstate.com.au is obviously a blatant typo. Two generic words with no logical paring.

Regarding Vouchers.com.au - competition is healthy and it would obviously work both ways. Aside from that, it doesn't matter how much they spend, they can't change the fact that VOUCHER isn't a misspelling of anything.

"auDA themselves are seeking help on this issue as more and more small businesses demand to have misspellings of their brands put on the list. They don't know where to draw the line." - I get that, but I don't see its relevance in this case.

 

[DavidL]

Let's try and move away from the specific example which we all agree is not worth fighting.

Maybe I've derailed the thread (and I apologise if so) but I want to know about the answers to these questions:

1) Should auDA decide what constitutes a brand or not
2) If so should they decide whether that brand is being infringed
3) If they decide what should they do

These are the questions that need to be answered before we even start talking about the merits of any policy (be it misspelling, monetisation or some new policy next week)

We all agree that the intent is good but IMO the answers to 1) and 2) should be a firm no.

Let me give another example from a few years back that perhaps you might be more sympathetic to.

We registered acc.net.au and put up a little site. It was an expired domain with a few IT related backlinks so we put up a MFA site targeting IT hopeing to get a bit of search engine ranking. Called it Aussie Compuetr Concepts or some crap.

It was deleted because acc.net.au was deemed to be a misspelling of abc.net.au which is an (unarguably) established brand. Was that fair? auDA acted within the same policy as they did for this realestate.com.au typo.

 

[Lorenzo]

In my opinion, a brand should be protected ONLY if there is bad faith and typos should not be given to greedy corporations as if you start with one (in this case obvious) then for same names a typo can be ten million different things.

example:

Men can be typo of Man or Ben or Mel or Meno or Amen...etc.

Each word has too many typos and they should be left alone.

 

[Vicstar]

We registered acc.net.au and put up a little site. It was an expired domain with a few IT related backlinks so we put up a MFA site targeting IT hopeing to get a bit of search engine ranking. Called it Aussie Compuetr Concepts or some crap.

It was deleted because acc.net.au was deemed to be a misspelling of abc.net.au which is an (unarguably) established brand. Was that fair? auDA acted within the same policy as they did for this realestate.com.au typo.

NO not fair in my eyes - seeing it is now regd to someone else w/o argument - and so is acb.net.au.. and abb.net.au.. cba.net.au.. bbc.net.au.. bca.net.au.. .. . (and acc.com.au..)

I see the REA group didn't TM 'real estate' (that would be like trying to trademark Newspaper. Or Calculator) they TM'd "REALESTATE.COM.AU" .. so I would like to think this has nothing to do with a TM or brand issue, but more of a "how much can you milk out of a generic" issue (yet the ACC case above states otherwise). If it was a TM issue, they should also tm "realSestate.com.au". Although, as much as RealSestate doesn't make much sense to me, there are a gazillion other R/E domains not targeted (RealEstates, RealEstatevictoria.. even UnrealEstate ?!!) or did I just put my foot in something

Hmmmm. You may need to settle for something like RealsEstateview.com.au.. or RealEstated...

 

[mrchristo]

i wouldnt worry about that domain.

honestly its a waste of $12 and not worth getting upset about.

take a look at the domain takeovers for anything 'aaa' (american automotive asociation)
even if you get aaahouses.com they will snatch it from you even though it has nothing to do with cars (autos).

look for other geo related .com's
such as
bondiproperties.com etc etc
(sorry its mine but got it a couple of weeks ago)

there are still quite a few gems out there......just get creative and look harder.

never sweat typos because its just wasted time

 

[MrMatrix]

cheapdomains.com.au are a bunch of crooks, im only new to domaining, i didnt even know there was a misspelling list. these guys wont even give me a credit for other names or my money back.

i was gonna use them for 1000s of names, i wont now they S**K

im also gonna use them in my court case.... nowhere on there site do they have any reference to a misspelled list, they let you register names they know are banned to take your cash!

also reelestate.com.au is taken by another realestate agent and thats ok

 

[Chris.C]

also reelestate.com.au is taken by another realestate agent and thats ok

Interesting...

 

[cherrytron]

A court or auDA should always just go by what a "reasonable person" would assume.

If you asked 100 people about realsestate.com.au if they thought it was to do with the REA business and 51 said 'yes' then I think axe it.

That ACC.net.au example above was pretty rough though, if I was one of the 100 asked, I would have let you keep that one.

 

[DomainNames]

I agree registrars should have a the banned mispelled list set up in their software so no one can register. Maybe AUDA needs to set this up.. Its easy for them to do they can just reserve them all or whatever to stop people losing money.

Mr Matrix. you can make a submission to AUDA about it. Its a great idea

 

[Data Glasses]

or drop the list once and for all

 

[cherrytron]

I agree registrars should have a the banned mispelled list set up in their software so no one can register.

I concur, I've often thought the same thing myself, it's a no-brainer. A registration request goes in, and instead of getting back an "OK" status, it rejects and says "NO" and the registrar goes .. "Soz, pls see the AUDA policy, ur domain was rejected". Easy mode.

It really is incredible. Imagine you went in to Coles and bought 5 grams of saffron for $20. You pay your bill, and then on your way out of the store the Saffron Police [auda] go, "Oops sorry, you're not allowed to have that, we must now confiscate it" ... then they go put it back on the shelf for the next unsuspecting customer.

How long do you think that practice would last?

 

[ant]

It really is incredible. Imagine you went in to Coles and bought 5 grams of saffron for $20. You pay your bill, and then on your way out of the store the Saffron Police [auda] go, "Oops sorry, you're not allowed to have that, we must now confiscate it" ... then they go put it back on the shelf for the next unsuspecting customer.

How long do you think that practice would last?

The domain on the misspelling list is not something that is easy to mistakenly register. Registrants (especially those who might fall foul of this list) could just as easily check the list before registering domains. Why should a typical registrar need to implement logic to prevent a very small minority of registrants from crossing the line.

 

[cherrytron]

Why should a typical registrar need to implement logic to prevent a very small minority of registrants from crossing the line.

It's 2011, implementation of something like this should take no time at all.

Comparing lists of data is what we have computers for, why make a person go thru a spreadsheet to check the list?

And by that rationale, why remove saffron from the shelves just to prevent a small minority of buyers from crossing the line?

The point is, if you're not allowed to buy them, why even let people do it? They could also use the same technology to implement other policy warnings on registrations, such as having 'university', 'commonwealth' etc in the name - if the registry just thru back an error saying "Check Policy" before continuing, that would be pretty fair.

 

[ant]

If we are in the process of shifting responsibility then it would make sense to push this responsibility to the Registry, then the list only needs to be maintained in one place. While we are at it we can get them to check ABN/ACN/Registered Business Numbers and TMs.

Reality is that software is only written if there is a commercial benefit, in this case a typical registrar will not be able to see any benefit.

It is also worth pointing out that these Policies are under review at the moment and this software development might be a waste of time in a few months (or mandatory).

I suggest you fill in the auDA survey at http://www.auda.org.au/2010npp/2010npp-index/ asking them to make this mandatory for Registrars.

 

[coreyg]

auDA, registrar's & domainers have different agenda's

Cheers
Corey

 

[Search]

I suggest you fill in the auDA survey at http://www.auda.org.au/2010npp/2010npp-index/ asking them to make this mandatory for Registrars.

Thanks for the reminder, I just filled this in.
It closes Friday week and every member on here should be submitting the survey.