Who makes the first move matters

Gerald M. Levine wrote an excellent article that domain investors, especially those that do outbound marketing should read.

Levine delves into the subject of who makes the initial contact in a domain negotiation.

Levine highlights the loss of Halifax.com and how even fellow domain investors agreed on the respondent losing.

From the article:

Woe be the impatient respondent! Even domain name bloggers and industry insiders who are generally quick to criticize panelists who award generic domain names to complainants agreed that the Respondent in Bank of Scotland had only itself to blame for losing <halifax.com>. Domain Name Wire which is one of the more prominent domain name industry blogs summarized the situation in its March 1, 2016 as follows:

A company in the United Kingdom just lost a domain name it paid $175,000 for in a UDRP. It should be viewed as a lesson on what not to do with a domain name that has both a generic/geo value as well as that of a brand.

What did the Respondent do that it should not have done?

Diversity Network acquired Halifax.com in September 2015 for $175,000 and then proceeded to make a series of stupid attempts to get Bank of Scotland, which operates a financial services company called Halifax, to buy the domain name.

Just days after completing the acquisition of the domain name, Diversity Network registered the domain names halifaxcarfinance.com and halifaxliving.org. The first of these names is squarely aimed at the complainant in this case, Bank of Scotland.

Diversity Network then reached out to Bank of Scotland offering Halifax.com for sale. It said it was preparing to use the domain names, and that it was receiving lots of emails about problems with logins to the Complainant’s service and added that this must be a security concern for the bank.

Read the full article here