In 2016? The Games have Begun Online. — Chicago Olympics

Chicago Olympics committee wants to get Chicago2016.com.

The Olympic focus right now may be in Beijing for the summer Olympics, but there’s by now an Olympic battle in Chicago.

Chicago is in the running for the 2016 Olympics and the Chicago 2016’s
United States Olympic Committee (USOC) uses Chicago2016.org as its web site. It wants to get Chicago2016.com and has filed for arbitration with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to get the domain name.

This will be an interesting case. On the surface, Chicago2016.com is a generic domain name. But it was registered on August 8, 2004, just four days ahead of Chicago2016.org was registered. Presumably the date shows that the registrant had knowledge that Chicago was gunning for the 2016 Olympics (perhaps it has by now been disclosed).

But the current owner hasn’t done anything with the domain name to make money from it. The registrar Register.com is showing ads on it that include “olympics”, but the domain owner has no control over these ads and isn’t profiting from them.

Regardless of the outcome, there’s a lesson here for all organizations, non-profit or for-profit, sizable or modest. Domain names are notable and need to be at the top of to-do list. Ahead of making any sort of notice regarding a product, ad campaign, etc., organizations must be proactive and register related domain names.

I’ve often stated that a domain name is a firm’s most notable asset. Take a look at a firm with lots of assets — say communications provider AT&T. If it lost its domain name its clients would find it difficult to pay their bills, log outages, and order services. The firm would ground to a halt as its own employees couldn’t e-mail each other.

Stay tuned to find out what happens in this case.