Apple gains ownership of iPhone-related porn domain names

Apple's bid to obtain a number of domain names from pornographic websites that include the "iPhone" name, including iphone4s.com, has proven successful.

As first reported by Domain Name Wire on Tuesday, a total of seven domain names have been turned over to Apple. The "WHOIS" record for the domains now shows MarkMonitor, a brand protection company, as the owner of the websites.

In addition to iphone4s.com, which carries the same name as Apple's latest handset, the other domains are iphonecamforce.com, iphonecam4s.com, iphoneporn4s.com, iphonesex4s.com, iphonexxforce.com, and porn4iphones.com.

Apple first filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization earlier this month. The complaint was quickly dropped, however, after the owner of the domains, an Israeli company, agreed to turn them over to Apple.

The iphone4s.com was originally registered in August of 2008, more than three years before Apple unveiled its iPhone 4S. The domain name for Apple's previous iPhone model, iphone4.com, is owned by Apple, but iphone3gs.com and iphone3g.com still forward to non-Apple sites.

The prompt resolution to the domain name dispute is different from a previous complaint filed by Apple over the ipods.com domain. That took a ruling from the WIPO in July to order the transfer of ipods.com to Apple.

Follow AppleInsider on Google News

22 Comments

jonorom

said about 12 years ago

So now we will have a walled garden of porn?

rabbit_coach

said about 12 years ago

Quote:

Originally Posted by JONOROM

So now we will have a walled garden of porn?

iPorn? \

fecklesstechguy

said about 12 years ago

That's the biggest milled aluminum-clad hard drive I've ever seen.

"Yep and it just works"

Sorry. Sorry. You let the filters down for just an instant and look what happens!!

jd_in_sb

said about 12 years ago

I registered aple.com in 1996 and sold it for $20,000 in 2008 to some guy. I had never done anything with it, I just liked owning a 4-letter domain name which are hard to come by. The domain did get a TON of traffic, however. After buying it from me the guy put Apple-related ads on aple.com and I recently noticed that Apple now owns the domain. I probably would have lost it eventually so I am extremely fortunate to have that outcome. Ironically, the money I made will eventually all go to Apple, one insanely-great-gadget at a time!

airnerd

said about 12 years ago

When I hear of corporations making moves like this, I often wonder if it would have been cheaper and faster to spend the money paid to lawyers to outright buy the product/problem in question from the rightful owner.

I'd imagine that, like the previous commenter, that if AAPL rolled in with $20k cash or say 50 shares of AAPL the owners would have happily turned the domains over. Preface it with "you can take this, or we can take your domain", and they would be even more incentivized. Instead someone lost their domain and (I assume) got nothing, but lawyers get paid. And yes, I realize the corporation keeps the lawyers on the payroll and all that...but you can see my point. Why fight when you could probably just buy the domain from the person that legally attained it in the first place.