Big Bad Apple Wants iPhone 5 Domain from Fans

From PC World: Whether the next version of the Apple's best-selling smartphone will be called the iPhone 5 or not, the company apparently covets the domain based on that name.

In a complaint filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Apple is challenging the ownership of the iphone5.com domain name, which is currently used to host a forum for Apple enthusiasts to speculate about the next iPhone.

According to the directory for domain name ownership, Whois, the owner of the iphone5 domain wishes to keep her or his identity private, but the owner's mailing address is a post office box in Fortitude Valley, Queensland, Australia.

Other iphone5 domains listed with Whois include iphone5.net, .org, .biz, .info and .us. Those domains are either not very active or dead ends. None have been challenged by Apple yet, but that's not unusual. In the past, Apple has mostly reserved its challenges to dot-com domains.

Although Apple has paid for some domain names in the past, it recently has resorted to the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) to latch onto domain names that violate its trademarks. Those names include iphone.com, ipods.com. wwwitunes.com, appleosxlion.com, and applefans.com.

While Apple's move on the iphone5 domain isn't surprising, its timing is out of the ordinary, according to Eric Slivka, writing for MacRumors. He notes that Apple didn't gain control of the iphone4.com domain until a year after the product was launched. It acted faster to grab the iphone4s domain -- weeks, rather than months after the product launch -- but some urgency was involved, as the domain was being used as bait to send visitors to a porn site.

View: Article @ Source Site