YouTube’s Battle For YouTube.CL

admin » 04 October 2007 » In Internet Marketing »

The domain wars continue. Today’s bout: YouTube.com, Google’s popular video site, is threatening to launch a lawsuit to gain control over YouTube.cl, a domain that currently hosts a website developed for Chilean audiences, aggregating online videos from YouTube.com.

The issue at stake in this confrontation is whether Andrés Chapero, the man who registered YouTube.cl with knowledge of the North American website YouTube.com should have to give up the domain because it was registered in “bad faith”. According to YouTube, Chapero absolutely should hand over the domain.

Chapero, on the other hand, says he absolutely should not have to give up YouTube.cl domain because he registered the domain in early 2006, before YouTube.com had gained worldwide popularity. Plus, Chapero claims that as early as 2005, he had asked YouTube North America if they were interested in cooperating with him to reach Chilean audiences. He says YouTube North America basically told him “no,” saying they only wanted to focus on North America. According to Chapero, YouTube had its chance to get in on the Chilean market and they didn’t take it.

One could argue that since YouTube North America knew that Chapero was interested in having YouTube in Chile that they could have taken the precautionary measure of registering the domain YouTube.cl themselves. But the decisive point here is that Chapero registered YouTube.cl in full knowledge of the existence of YouTube.com and is even using the domain to aggregate Chile-related videos from YouTube.com. If that’s not bad faith then what is? (Let us know your thoughts.)

There has yet to be a decision on this case but persons holding Chilean variations of the YouTube name such as YouTubeVideos.cl, Youtube-videos.cl, and Youtubechile.com have already given up their domains. Will Chapero follow or will he wait until YouTube proceeds with the threatened lawsuit? Only time will tell.