Swiss watch company's domain name RaymondWeil.com to expire soon

Raymond Weil is a famous Swiss watchmaking brand. The company uses Raymond-Weil.com as the domain name for its main website, and its U.S. website also uses the Raymond-Weil.us ccTLD domain name. According to Archive.org, the non-hyphenated RaymondWeil.com domain was used as a forwarder for the watchmaker's main website.

Raymond-Weil.com

RaymondWeil.com

Just recently, someone browsing through the list of domain names up for auction was surprised to find RaymondWeil.com on the pending deletion list. I'm guessing that perhaps a third party owns the domain and let it expire. A Whois search on DomainTools showed that my assumption was wrong. The domain was registered to the watch company.

It's odd that the company would let this domain name, which matches its brand, expire, especially since it uses domain names with hyphens for its website.

Since the domain name is in a pending deletion status, I don't think the registrant can restore the domain name until it is completely deleted. Once deleted, certain platform squatting services will bid on and auction the domain name if a customer books it.

One would think that the trademark risk would be high if an unrelated company owned the domain name.

Source: domaininvesting