Dell sues its own affiliates!
It would appear Dell is suing the owners of the following domains: d3ell.com, de3LL.com, d4ell.com, de4ll.com, dedll.com, derll.com and dxell.com.
The owners of these domains have been redirecting the typo-traffic back to the Dell site via a LinkShare affiliate link. So the domain owners would take a slice of the cash generated from sales via the affiliate link.
Dell have realised that they’ve paid the typo-traffic domain owners and have now decided to sue; they want the domain names handing over, the commissions back and, ‘of course’, damages and legal fees!
I think Dell are in the wrong here, Dell made money from the traffic sent to them from these domains so what’s their problem?
I’m not keen on the idea of registering a domain for misspelled websites or people registering a .net or .org of the same site name BUT if you don’t want someone to register and take advantage of a typo… register it yourself!
It would appear Dell is suing the owners of the following domains: d3ell.com, de3LL.com, d4ell.com, de4ll.com, dedll.com, derll.com and dxell.com.
The owners of these domains have been redirecting the typo-traffic back to the Dell site via a LinkShare affiliate link. So the domain owners would take a slice of the cash generated from sales via the affiliate link.
Dell have realised that they’ve paid the typo-traffic domain owners and have now decided to sue; they want the domain names handing over, the commissions back and, ‘of course’, damages and legal fees!
I think Dell are in the wrong here, Dell made money from the traffic sent to them from these domains so what’s their problem?
I’m not keen on the idea of registering a domain for misspelled websites or people registering a .net or .org of the same site name BUT if you don’t want someone to register and take advantage of a typo… register it yourself!
January 16th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
I read that also and thought it was a really dumb move by Dell. They have had enough bad PR lately and it is not like the affiliates were stealing anything from them, it sent them business!