If I go out and register:
212-555-PIES.com and 212-555-7437.com
Would the local pizza company have any rights as it relates to those domains? Could I get into hot water for running a directory of other pizza shops in Mahattan on this page?
Not my idea of fair competition. Is it yours?
On the other hand, you'll give him loads of free promotion wherever your URL is seen, so I guess what goes around, comes around :)
I'll rephrase it in a way that does not get the village green pizza shop preservation society up in arms...
My client is in a business that relies heavily on phone numbers, they have a lot of them, and I am trying to figure out if they should register the numbers as domain names as a defensive measure.
If one of our competitors registered some of our phone numbers as domain names, would we have any recourse?
I'd take out some Adwords for the important phone numbers and see how many impressions and clicks you get in a month. If there are none then there's no point in protecting them. If there are many then it's worth buying them - because those might well be potential customers!
Why would anyone, anywhere, want to stop a rival from publicising their phone number?
I'd send a free pizza and do some decent marketing.
This whole Internet thingie really works much better when you apply simple common sense; trying to be too clever almost always helps the opposition.
Might sound harsh, but how many searches are based on #s?
Please leave ethics and your opinion over marketing strategies aside and focus on the question.
Do phone numbers have the same sort of protections that a trademarked term or a famous person's name does when it comes to domain names or is it akin to a generic keyword?
There is no 'good' motive for what you describe (though it's not at all clear what you REALLY intend), and most civilized countries have measures to protect businesses from misleading and underhand attacks.
Confusing visitors has never been at the top of the list as a marketing strategy, and I suspect the whole thing will backfire against you, so go for it! - poetic justice is much more satisfying than the Long Arm Of The Law ;)
[edited by: Quadrille at 11:23 am (utc) on Jan. 30, 2007]
You might want to examine a bit of case law in your jurisdiction that uses those legal terms and read the local consumer protection laws.
The business may not 'own' their phone number as a URL but that isn't to say that someone else can exploit that business's phone number to their advantage or to the disadvantage of the company that uses the telephone number in their trade.
Ethics and law tend to be intertwined. Don't fob off the ethics comments as irrelevant. Jurors may not know the law in depth but they tend to have a decent sense of fair play . . or ethics. If you induce a client to play this game then don't be surprised by a lawsuit that names you and your clien'ts business, and look for that client to turn around and also sue you.
They probably paid you more to think about and post these questions then it would have cost just to register the domains in the first place.
7145551212.com
or
714-555-1212.com
:)
Page one - they both get traffic.
