I was pretty surprised to learn this week that a UDRP was filed against Blue.app, the domain is owned by domain industry veteran and successful startup founder Bill Karamouzis who broke the news about the UDRP on Twitter earlier this week:
Bill has a pretty snazzy site on Blue.app right now, and it seems pretty clear to me that it doesn’t have anything to do with Blue cross…instead it’s just a site for people who like the color blue.
I took a look at the USPTO site to see what kinds of Trademarks exist around the word “Blue” and it looks like quite a few people have Trademarks, not just Blue Cross. In fact, there’s a guy in Switzerland who has the Trademark on Blue for use in training and educational materials related to management and human resources. Lake Tahoe has a Trademark for “Tahoe Blue” and the list goes on.
To me this seems like a pretty silly move by Blue Cross as the site on Blue.app has nothing to do with insurance and Blue is a pretty darn generic word. I’ll be interested to see how this pans out but I hope that Bill hits them with RDNH and gets some money out of them for wasting his time.
Stay tuned, I’m sure there will be more to come here – go get em’ Bill!
