.eu Top-level domain Names

.eu Traffic Hijacking

[rhross]

Hello,

Our traffic has fallen off 47% since 04/06. I have since realized this is when Europe released .eu Coincidently, or maybe not, I have found a domain using our name .eu was registered 4/7/06. This site is nothing but ads and redirects and actually uses our bricks and mortar store name in their title.

I have filed a complaint with the Prague-based Arbitration Court for .eu, [adr.eu...]

My questions are:
1) Is it possible this group has diverted 47% of our traffic? We have been online since 97 and have worked very hard to achieve this amount of traffic.
2) Does anyone have experience dealing with the ADR
3) Has anyone else noticed their domain has been registered with a .eu

Thanks in advance for any help/advice

[jmccormac]

Our traffic has fallen off 47% since 04/06. I have since realized this is when Europe released .eu Coincidently, or maybe not, I have found a domain using our name .eu was registered 4/7/06. This site is nothing but ads and redirects and actually uses our bricks and mortar store name in their title.

This could be down to variations in search engine algorithms. But the fact that the .eu registrant probably has the domain on a parking/domain resale website like Sedo does improve your chances in an ADR. This is especially so if you have strong intellectual property protection on your store name and it could be proven that the .eu registrant has no rights in the domainname and has registered in order to sell it back or in bad faith. It can be difficult to prove a pattern of bad faith registrations but it is not impossible - some ADRs have specifically mentioned registrants (some of whom have thousands of .eu domains squatted) over bad faith registrations (some hosted on Buycool Limited's nameservers and some of UK front companies are in the ADRs below).

[adr.eu...]
[adr.eu...]
[adr.eu...]

3) Has anyone else noticed their domain has been registered with a .eu

The .eu ccTLD is absolutely riddled with squatted domains.

Regards...jmcc

[wackybrit]

Yep, my reasonably unknown company with a really unique name.. .eu equivalent was registered on like the first day or something ;-) I didn't want the .eu name anyway, but I was still surprised.

I was even more surprised to find it's a domain squatter who lives just 50 miles from here.. (but my business is not known locally)