NFL team failed to convince panel that domain investor registered and used the domain in bad faith.
The NFL’s L.A. Rams team has lost a cybersquatting case it filed with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) against the domain name rams.com.
Domain name investor Frank Mardian, also known as “Maple Dots,” acquired the domain for CAN 50,000 in November 2022.
According to the response, a Turkish agency that represented a large company called Rams offered to acquire the domain early this year for $2 million. After receiving that offer, Mardian had a broker reach out to the NFL team, offering to sell the domain name for $3.5 million.
The three-member WIPO panel affirmed (pdf) that people have a right to invest in generic, dictionary, and short domain names, writing, “RAMS, however, as set out in section 5C above, has both an ordinary dictionary meaning by itself and is used by many different businesses and even as an acronym for a number of different things or activities.”
It also noted that it made sense to contact the football team after receiving this offer:
Given the Respondent had received what (so far as the Panel can tell on the papers) was a genuine offer for the disputed domain name in the sum of USD 2 million, the Respondent’s conduct in seeking to generate a bidding war over the rights to the disputed domain name of the short, dictionary word with multiple possible uses at issue here cannot be characterised as use in bad faith under the Policy.
The Rams will be stuck using TheRams.com.
The football team was internally represented, and John Berryhill represented the domain name owner.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
