With the “new” iPad, Apple stopped applying numerical suffixes to distinguish iPad iterrations, a practice many expect to continue with a sixth-generation iPhone (think “the new iPhone”).
The fact doesn’t stop the company from fighting to secure ownership of the attractive iPad3.com domain name. Looks like someone’s plans to pocket a little profit from serving a bunch of ads on a single homepage just got curbed by Cupertino…
According to Domain Name Wire (via MacRumors), Apple has filed another claim with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in an effort to gain ownership of the iPad3.com domain.
iPad3.com was registered in January 2010 and is currently owned by a company called Global Access in Isle of Man. Global Access is no stranger to cybersquatting complaints, having lost challenges by big companies such as AllState, AOL, an MasterCard. The domain name is currently parked. Its traffic is rotated to various domain parking services with Above.com.
iPad 4, you say?
How about iPad 24?
According to the publication, “just about every iPad#.com domain up to at least iPad25.com has already been registered”.
It’s interesting that Apple doesn’t yet own iPad.com.
The purpose of all this is, of course, to prevent cybersquatting and re-route traffic from those branded domains to the appropriate sections on the main Apple homepage.
Visit iPhone.com and you’ll see what I mean.
Now visit iPad.com.
See?
That’s bad for the brand, now isn’t it?
Like many other companies, Apple fights tooth and nail for domain names which contain variants of Apple’s brand names. The company does so by registering such domains themselves through brand protection agencies or by filing disputes with WIPO.
It filed one such dispute claim over the iPhone5.com domain (and won) and also forced a guy in Poland to relinquish ownership of aplestore.com and a bunch of other misspelled domain names.
Also interesting, Cupertino applied for the .apple top-level domain with
So, what’s in a name?
A lot, obviously.