When Facebook embraced the metaverse by rebranding its corporate name to Meta in October 2021, it did much more than acknowledge its own place in this emerging experience for social and business communities. It also opened the door to other companies and individuals interested in jumping on the bandwagon – including, of course, cybersquatters, who are nothing if not opportunistic.
In this video, I talk about two cases in which trademark owners filed complaints involving domain names that contain the word “metaverse.”
Both of these cases were filed under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and resulted in decisions ordering the domain names transferred to the trademark owners: Disney and Tencent. I also mention two other metaverse-related domain name disputes, for <metaversecalvinklein.com> and <metaversemorganstanley.com>.
Interestingly, one of the disputed domain names, <disneymetaverse.com>, was registered the day after the chairman of Disney Parks began talking about how Disney would embrace the metaverse.
In the video, I discuss important issues that trademark owners need to consider with regard to cybersquatters in the metaverse, including:
Trademark owners should be proactive and consider registering domain names that contain the words meta or metaverse plus their trademarks, to potentially avoid some domain name disputes in the first place.
Despite a number of trademark applications and registrations that include the word “metaverse” (one of the oldest of which is owned by Steve Jackson Games), inclusion of the word metaverse in a domain name does nothing to prevent a finding of confusing similarity under the UDRP.
While the metaverse seems to have suddenly become a hot concept, the UDRP is a tried-and-true brand protection mechanism that helps trademark owners protect themselves in this exciting frontier.
