Scammers are nothing if not opportunistic.
Already, plenty of news reports have been warning about hackers and other online threats prompted by the coronavirus. And now, at least two apparent cybersquatters have tried to capitalize on the global pandemic by registering domain names that contain the word “coronavirus”: <coronavirusgoogle.com> and <googlecoronavirus.com>.
These two domain names are the subject of separate complaints filed in the past week under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Both of the UDRP complaints were filed at the Forum (formerly the National Arbitration Forum, or NAF) and simply identify the status (as of this writing) as “pending.”
Presumably, the complainant in each of these complaints is Google, which is a prolific filer of domain name disputes, including more than 400 cases at the Forum and about 85 cases at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), almost all of which it has won.
The Forum’s records do not (yet) identify the registrants of the newly disputed domain names. The whois database shows that the identity of one of the registrants is, not surprisingly, protected by a privacy service. The other registrant is identified in the whois database by a name that corresponds to the same name as a college student — but because whois records are often falsified, I will refrain from using the name here.
The website associated with <googlecoronavirus.com> simply contains a single WordPress page with a looping video of President Trump at a microphone surrounded by members of the White House coronavirus task force. I tried to visit the website associated with <coronavirusgoogle.com>, but McAfee WebAdvisor identified it as “very risky.”
While it’s impossible to know the registrants’ intentions in registering these domain names, many cybersquatters try to profit by selling their domain names to the relevant trademark owner — something Google apparently had no interest in doing here. As one popular blogger, Elliot Silver of DomainInvesting.com, wrote:
I don’t really see the point of registering a domain name like GoogleCoronavirus.com or any other trademark domain name that is similar to this. Filing and winning a UDRP on obvious trademark domain names is pretty straightforward, and most companies would probably rather pay a dispute organization like NAF or WIPO than reward a speculator.
I would imagine this will be an easy win for Google, and it should be a reminder to people that registering obvious trademark domain names is a bad idea and a waste of money.
Without seeing the complaints in either of these UDRP cases, it’s unclear exactly what has occurred and why Google filed these complaints. But it’s no stretch to predict that Google will, as Silver said, prevail in both proceedings. Given the strength of the Google trademark, the panels will likely have an easy time finding that the UDRP’s “bad faith” element has been satisfied.
Indeed, as the WIPO UDRP Overview says: “Panels have consistently found that the mere registration of a domain name that is identical or confusingly similar (particularly domain names… incorporating the mark plus a descriptive term) to a famous or widely-known trademark by an unaffiliated entity can by itself create a presumption of bad faith.”
Fortunately, despite the unprecedented worldwide disruptions caused by the coronavirus, the Forum, like other UDRP service providers, is still processing cases, as I recently wrote.
The coronavirus domain names in these cases are not the first time that cybersquatters have taken advantage of health crises. One previous example: During the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic, the drug company Hoffmann-La Roche filed at least four UDRP complaints against domain names that contained the words “swine” and “flu” plus one of its trademarks — each of which it won.
