Flippa is a domain marketplace that attracts a variety of domain sellers; its global reach is quite profound.
While most US-based domain sellers are aware of and comprehend the purpose of trademarks, those in many other countries often do not.
Trademark infringing domains are definitely being listed on Flippa, because there is no automatic provision to block such violations.
Unlike Sedo, Flippa does not seem to provide a filtration mechanism, and relies on user reports to remove domain names violating famous – or less famous – trademarks.
I often stumble onto such famous trademarks by looking at aggregator listings of sales, some of which are syndicated on Domaining.com.
Recently came across domains using famous marks owned by Amazon, Coca-Cola and other such giants. There was no question about the purpose these domains served, other than to confuse the public or to monetize search traffic by utilizing a famous trademark.
This is akin to exploiting the fame of a great brand by flooding the market with knock-offs. And that’s a criminal offense, in the US, Europe and other countries that respect the use and function of trademarks.
With that in mind, Flippa responds positively to such blatant violations.
In the past, the support’s first argument was that the trademark holder needs to initiate such a report, a response that was equal to turning a blind eye to someone facilitating a crime.
These days, however, Flippa’s support takes a good look into what is going on, and while it sometimes escalates matters to their Marketplace Integrity team, the end result is the removal of the offending listing.
And that, is a great improvement; being proactive, like Sedo, would fix a long-standing issue at its root.
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