Three Letter Domain Be a Typo? — Can a

Dun & Bradstreet wins DBN.com domain name.

Here’s an interesting UDRP domain arbitration decided by a National Arbitration Forum panelist.

Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, which operates DNB.com, filed for arbitration against DBN.com. The domain owner didn’t respond to the complaint and lost the case. It didn’t help that his parking page at DBN.com has links for products related to Dun & Bradstreet.

What’s interesting is that D&B claims the respondent is engaging in typosquatting:

Complainant contends that Respondent is intentionally attempting to attract Internet users to its confusingly similar domain name for financial gain by creating a likelihood of confusion with Complainant’s WWW.DNB.COM and DNB.COM marks. The disputed domain name’s resolving website contains click-through links which promote Complainant’s competitors in the financial services industry. The Panel presumes that Respondent is profiting from such use. Therefore, the Panel concludes that Respondent has engaged in bad faith registration and use of the disputed domain name…

We usually think of typosquatting as being more obvious than this. Indeed, it’s hard to believe that a three letter .com domain could be considered a typo at all. I suppose it depends on the use. If the owner of the domain had parked it but included links to unrelated services, it would be difficult for Dun & Bradstreet to prove any sort of malice. In fact, I doubt they would have tried to get the domain name had that been the case.