Don’t Let Your Enforcement Budget Go Up In Smoke

An otherwise unremarkable UDRP case over the domain name buying-duty-free-newport-cigarettes.info holds a valuable lesson for brand owners. While the UDRP is a great tool and a key component of any domain name strategy, it’s not always worth the time and expense of going after a domain name that simply isn’t worth it.

In this case, Lorillard Licensing Company, LLC filed the complaint with the National Arbitration Forum against Natalia Gerdt, who failed to submit a response in the proceeding. As noted above, the decision itself is very routine, with the NAF panelist quickly finding that the complaint fulfilled all three elements of the UDRP and should be transferred.

This case does serve, though, as a great reminder that brand owners should consider the ROI of domain name enforcement. There is no reason for a brand owner to spend valuable time and resources going after such a long domain name like buying-duty-free-newport-cigarettes.info that no one is ever going to type into their browser and won’t even offer a high ranking on search engines.  Further, the website 1. gets no traffic and 2. has a pay-per-click (PPC) page that doesn’t even contain links relevant to Complainant’s industry.

Even the most wealthy global brand owners need to wisely use their enforcement budgets, so the lesson here is to carefully choose your targets and not waste your time and money going after domain names that, although technically infringing, are viewed by almost no one and that are almost certainly causing no harm to your brand.