Foreign registrants and trademarks

[Bacon Farmer]

I noticed a marc aria com picked up quite a few domains via netfleet yesterday relying on a trademark application only.

For example: au-immigration com au

A trade mark search for this registration shows a trademark application (https://search.ipaustralia.gov.au/trademarks/search/view/1892238?q=1892238) for "Axesis Immg".

I'm curious to know how legit is this?

 

[snoopy]

Policy reform needed I'd say.

Wait till the Chinese shoe sellers figure out all they need is a trademark application.

 

[DomainShield]

It is perfectly legitimate for foreign entities to do business in Australia.
In theory if Axesis Immg offer a product or service which relates to the domain they can also easily establish a close and substantial connection. The trademark you linked to is for a class 45 trademark so they are definitely involved in immigration and if they deal with any Australian immigration then they meet both eligibility and pass the close an substantial connection.

No Policy reform required since we already have suitable policies in place.

I also cannot see a shoe scammer spending $200 applying for a trademark and having their actual details linked to a bunch of domain names. They seem perfectly happy stealing identities and remaining mostly anonymous.

 

[Bacon Farmer]

It's sus because there were 40 odd domains purchased on the drop from the same people across different areas for different trade mark applicants.

 

[snoopy]

I also cannot see a shoe scammer spending $200 applying for a trademark and having their actual details linked to a bunch of domain names.

You can't see people making 6 figures per year in China spending $200?

How many .au domains did they register again?

This trademark application rule is an obvious loophole. Would be a different story of they actually had a valid trademark in Australia.

 

[DomainShield]

Trademarks are not loopholes, recently applied for trademarks are allowed, the people selling the items are allowed to do so in Australia, they are also allowed to apply for their trademarks at ATMOSS they are also entitled to use com.au domain names to promote their products.

If you go to ATMOSS via the original link you can see the "Address for Service" is "Marcaria.com LLC" you can then do an advanced search for all the trademarks they have applied for and you will see 311 trademarks they have applied for, many of them recently.

Quick internet search shows Marcaria.com is a large international ICANN accredited registrar who specialises in international trademark registrations and domain names. They also seem to now be acting as an agent for their customers and registering domain names with a close and substantial connection to their customers products as reflected in the trademarks. If you actually go to the websites you will find a majority of them are selling the product the domain name refers to and some of them even have local Australian phone numbers you can call to order the products.

This really does not seem like a scam to me.

 

[Bacon Farmer]

Yeah it's probably just a coincidence that the trade marks were all applied for in December and the domains purchased on the drop on one day. Perhaps someone forgot to renew them as some appear to have websites with multi year histories attached.

 

[DomainShield]

Doubt it is a co-incident, looks more like auDA pinged them for a technicality over how they acted as an agent so they are cleaning up their portfolio by registering the local equivalent of their clients international trademarks at ATMOSS and then catching them via the drops to the correct entity.