Won Through UDRP Have Expired — 7,000 Domains

Expired domain names show disconnect between corporate functions.

Corporation Service Firm (CSC), a brand protection firm, released a study today regarding the expenses incurred by brand holders to get domain names through UDRP. The study suggests firms have spent $220 million getting domains back through UDRP, and that it would have only cost $1.1 million had they proactively registered the domains.

But what I found more interesting is how many domains won through UDRP have been allowed to expire:

Of the domain names that were won and handed back to the brand owner, almost 4,000 have been subsequently lapsed and are now available for registration. Also, an additional 3,000 domain names were lapsed following they were won and then re-registered – in some cases, by third parties. In fact, CSC found that a number of firms have disputed the same domain name up to three times since they continued to allow it to lapse.

This shows a major disconnect at firms between three groups:

1. Trademark attorneys that feel they need to get every possible trademark domain name.
2. Brand managers who don’t know what to do with the domains when they get them.
3. Corporate domain managers who are are reactive instead of proactive. Often times they don’t even work in conjunction with the trademark attorneys.

I’ve looked through portfolios of Fortune 500 firms and found that a good portion of their domains don’t resolve. Others are merely forwarded to the firm’s home page when they ought to direct to a specific page on the web site. CSC’s statistics quantify this mismanagement.