News Network Wants CNN.es Domain Name: CNN en Espanol

News network wants Spanish domain name.

Cable News Network, aka CNN, wants to get its hands on the CNN.es domain name. There’s just one problem: it was registered back in 2005. So the firm has filed a domain dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization to try to get the domain name.

At the time of writing CNN.es doesn’t resolve to a web site. But the domain’s owner appears to be based in the United Kingdom if his email address is any any indication. (.Es is the country code for Spain.)

This isn’t the first time CNN has challenged domain names through domain arbitration. It filed 8 cases last decade, winning all 8 of them. Still, this appears to be the first challenge the firm has made for a second level domain name merely containing “CNN” in a country code domain.

CNN knows the value of a good domain name, even if belatedly. In 2008 the firm ponied up $700,000 for the domain name iReport.com. CNN had made the iReport brand valuable thanks to its crowdsourced news program by the same name.