This week’s launch of Delta Air Lines’ new Internet domain name caps a messy four-year feud that involved the Atlanta carrier, a New York consumer finance company and a Cary, NC, Internet service provider.
Since going online almost five years ago, the airline had been using the cumbersome delta-air.com as its homepage. It said Delta.com would offer “a quicker, direct connection for its existing Internet customers.”
Apparently it wasn’t the only company that felt that way. The first organization that acquired Delta.com back in 1993 also liked it and thought it had a right to use it. But DeltaComm Internet Services president Jeff Woods said he couldn’t handle the requests for frequent flier miles and schedules and tried to sell the address to the airline.
That’s when the trouble started.
Delta and DeltaComm couldn’t agree on a price. So Woods decided to encourage the airline by posting the following information on Delta.com: “If you’re looking for an airline, try American Airlines, the frequent-flier airline the owners and staff of DeltaComm Internet Services flew 100,000 miles on in 1997.” Included was a link to the American Web page.
Woods underscored the jab with another note: “Please tell Delta’s Web master that you believe Delta ought to just pay us the actual cost of changing domain names, and to make Delta.com the domain of Delta Air Lines. We’re quite willing to let them have it, but we must be compensated for the cost of moving everyone to another domain.” (For the full story, go to the original 1998 article.)
Soon after that, Woods did sell Delta.com — to Delta Financial.
Woods says Delta Air Lines sued Delta Financial for interference, claiming the airline already had a contract for the sale of the domain. It accused the financial services company of outbidding it for the virtual real estate. Delta Financial then counter-sued, a lawsuit in which Woods says he was deposed.
Neither Delta Air Lines nor Delta Financial would comment for this story.
Two weeks after Woods’ deposition, the Delta.com domain changed hands. It appears that the two Deltas reached an out-of-court settlement, although the details on that agreement are unclear.
Woods says he’s troubled that Delta Air Lines, which he claims wanted to sue him “out of existence rather than negotiate a fair price to start with,” won the rights to the domain in the end. He adds, “This sad story only re-enforces the idea that if the bigger business can’t buy it, they should sue the little, legitimate businessman to get it for ‘free,’ no matter whose life you might destroy in the meantime.”
But Woods isn’t entirely correct. This story is about more than a big airline intimidating a financial services company or a small ISP. It raises questions about cybersquatting and the value of online real estate and it exposes the flaws of the current Internet domain name system. It also says a great deal about the priorities of travel companies regarding the Internet today and how far they will go to get what they want.
But most of all, Woods is wrong about there being a winner. There is no winner. Delta Air Lines may have secured the rights to a prized piece of online real estate, but at what cost?
Its apparent strong-arm tactics to control Delta.com directly contradict the image it’s trying to project of being “humble, not corporate” and “generous, not chintzy” (those adjectives are courtesy of an internal Delta “brand positioning” document).
Delta Financial lost also. It spent valuable resources on fighting the airline. Same with DeltaComm.
When it comes down to it, perhaps the only winners were the lawyers.
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