Alas Smiths: an exploration of WHSmith's domains following their store closures

Introduction

Following the news of the announced closure of many of the physical stores of the 200+-year-old UK-based retailer WHSmith, we conduct an overview of the domain-name landscape relating to the brand.

This follows on from other similar recent Stobbs analyses for other troubled brands^[1,2]. In response to economic difficulties, tax rises and increased online competition, the organisation - which was running popular celebrity advertising campaigns on prime-time television as recently as the late 1990s (Figure 1) - is exploring strategic options relating to the sale of its high-street stores, with a greater potential focus on travel retail (based in airports, railway stations and hospitals) and potentially on online sales^[3,4,5].

Figure 1: Still from a WHSmith television advertisement (1997) (courtesy of YouTube; copyright WHSmith)

Analysis

The size of the overall domain landscape relating to the brand is relatively modest - perhaps unsurprisingly, given the previous physical retail focus of the organisation; analysis of domain-name zone files shows that, as of the start of February 2025, there are around 171 registered domains with names containing 'w(-)h(-)smith' (with optional hyphens), of which 112 appear to be under official ownership (according to information available via automated whois look-ups), leaving just 59 apparent third-party - potentially infringing - examples.

A handful of the domains appear to be non-relevant (e.g. examples relating to 'Andrew H Smith', 'Matthew H Smith' and 'W W H Smithers'), whilst a few more appear to relate to use of the same brand name by unrelated entities in distinct business areas (including construction, engineering and wine companies, and a school). 

Of the 51 remaining domains, few show significant website content, with the majority resolving to no live site (21 instances), pages of pay-per-click (PPC) links (13), pages offering the domain name for sale (4), placeholder pages (4), or blank or other error pages (4). It is possible that some of these may also be under official ownership (perhaps managed outside a central portfolio), in which case the importance of domain consolidation, and re-direction to official website content (to maximise web traffic and thereby the 'value' of the domain names, and to minimise customer confusion) is highlighted. If genuinely under third-party control, some are clearly being monetised by their owners (though offers of sale or the placement of PPC links) and might be candidates for dispute. Many of the domain names in the dataset are highly relevant (e.g. just 'whsmith' plus a TLD (top-level domain, or domain extension), or feature the brand name together with relevant keywords such as 'books', 'stationery' or 'stores'), and might be targets for acquisition by the brand, for use with official websites. It is also noteworthy that there is a record of a previous legal case by the company in 2000, against the third-party registrant of the domain name whsmith[.]com^[6] (now part of the official portfolio), in addition to a much more recent UDRP dispute by the organisation against the registrant of whsmith[.]site, resulting in the successful transfer of the name^[7].

Four of the websites in the dataset display official branding; these might be legitimate sites (perhaps operated by regional entities or approved partners), but do pose significant potential for threat if not under official control (Figure 2). One further example comprises an explicit case of misdirection; whsmithco[.]com re-directs to a site promoting gambling services (Figure 3). 

Figure 2: Examples of websites displaying official WHSmith branding, but lacking explicitly official domain ownership details

Figure 3: Screenshot of the re-direction destination website from whsmithco[.]com

Furthermore, 27 of the 51 relevant third-party domain names (i.e. 53%) are configured with active mail exchange (MX) records, indicating that they have been configured to be able to send and receive e-mails, and could be associated with phishing activity. 16 of the 51 domains have been registered since the start of 2024, and may be particularly worthy of close monitoring as they may not yet have been 'activated' for use. 

It is also noteworthy that the set of third-party domains is dominated by registrations carried out via retail-grade registrars, which are traditionally popular with infringers. Included in the list are six registrars with 'bad reputation' scores of 0.1 or greater according to Spamhaus^[8] (Namecheap (score = 0.1; 3 domains in WHSmith dataset), PDR (0.2; 2 domains), NameSilo (0.5; 1 domain), Sav.com (0.2; 1 domain), URL Solutions (0.9; 1 domain), West263 (0.2; 1 domain)), putting them in around the top-100 'high-risk' registrars in the list. 

Conclusion

With the exception of the few potentially threatening examples presented in this article, the domain landscape for WHSmith is currently relatively 'clean' - though, as discussed, there are perhaps some recommendations to be made regarding good practice for domain portfolio management.. 

It is noteworthy that a brand with the renown of WHSmith has seen such an apparently limited level of online infringement, though this may be in part due to the extent to which it has historically perceived as a physical, 'real-world' brand. However, we have seen previously that high-profile news stories are frequently a trigger for spikes in domain infringement activity, and the opportunities for scammers are perhaps magnified in view of WHSmith's potential move away from physical retail to a possible greater focus on online sales. More generally, it remains to be seen how the evolution of the brand may affect its future success; high-street sales generally are declining, and the travel retail part of the organisation is likely not to generate such high levels of brand engagement - might a future increased online element to the business generate a push back towards the previous higher levels of brand engagement?  

Either way, going forward, the WHSmith brand owner responsible for online content would be well advised to keep a close eye on the evolving landscape, through a comprehensive programme of online monitoring, analysis and prioritisation, and enforcement.

References

[1] https://www.iamstobbs.com/opinion/high-steaks-game-hawksmoors-ipo-and-its-domains

[2] https://www.iamstobbs.com/opinion/no-party-ip-associated-with-the-fallen-tupperware-brand

[3] https://www.sharesmagazine.co.uk/index.php/article/wh-smith-hangs-for-sale-sign-over-historic-high-street-stores

[4] https://news.sky.com/story/wh-smith-in-secret-talks-to-sell-historic-high-street-arm-13295955

[5] https://www.timeout.com/uk/news/heres-the-full-list-of-whsmith-stores-that-are-closing-for-good-in-2025-012025

[6] https://www.5rb.com/case/wh-smith-v-colman/

[7] https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/pdf/2023/d2023-5342.pdf

[8] https://www.spamhaus.org/reputation-statistics/registrars/domains/; data correct as of 29-Jan-2025

This article was first published on 25 March 2025 at:

https://www.iamstobbs.com/insights/alas-smiths-an-exploration-of-wh-smiths-domains-following-their-store-closures

The Man with The Golden Gun: Explorations of James Bond IP

Introduction

The worst-kept-secret member of the British Secret Service has been in the news a number of times in significant weeks. Following from ongoing speculation about the identity of the next actor to take on the role of Bond^[1], a number of stories about the creative control of the film franchise have emerged. One of the most significant revelations is the news that the Broccoli/Wilson family - owners of EON Productions Limited and Danjaq in the US^[2], and long-time controllers of brand Bond - will be ceding control to Amazon MGM Studios in a reported $1 billion deal^[3,4,5,6,7].

An additional complication is that fact that the copyright protection for the original James Bond novels is set to expire in 2035, allowing some elements of the IP to fall into the public domain and potentially providing an opening for creations by rival studios^[8] and, potentially, additional licensing opportunities^[9].

Furthermore, a case has also recently been filed by Dubai-based property developer Josef Kleindienst for the cancellation of various Bond-related trademarks in the EU and UK, on the grounds of non-use^[10].

With these developments in mind, it seems an appropriate time to consider the current landscape of intellectual property surrounding 007, to gain an overview of what the current and future custodians of the brand may need to contend with. In particular, there may be a risk that James Bond may be (or may become) subject to some element of genericism, as an overall descriptor of an action-hero spy character.

The James Bond domain name landscape

As in numerous previous studies, the domain name dataset is a good place from which to gain initial insights, as a proxy of the overall IP landscape. As of 01-Mar-2025, there are 746 registered gTLD^[11] domains with names containing 'james(-)bond', 'bond*007' or '007*bond'^[12] (collectively, 'James Bond domains'), according to zone-file analysis, of which at least (only) 37 appear to be under official ownership (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Numbers of third-party James Bond gTLD domains, by month of registration (where available) (Jan-1996 to Feb-2025)

425 of the 709 third-party domain names produce some sort of live website response, of which 230 have a 'non-zero' webpage title.

Aside from the group of essentially 'dormant' sites, such as those displaying holding or parking pages, and pages offering the domain names for sale, the dataset unsurprisingly also includes groups of informational or fan sites, and other instances of websites which may pertain to legitimate use of the same ('James Bond') name ('James Bond Furniture', 'James Bond Dental', 'James Bond Logistics', 'James Bond Carpet Cleaning', etc.).

Beyond this, there are a number of additional websites featuring use of  the '007' 'tag' in conjunction with what appear to be otherwise unrelated 'Bond' references, as an apparent means of providing an additional marketing 'hook' (e.g. Megan Bond beauty products (SLD^[13]: meganbond007), Bond Flooring (SLD: bondfl007ing), 'Bond 007 Heating and Cooling' (SLD: bond007heatingandcooling), bond provider Worldwide Insurance Specialists, Inc. (SLD: bond007), etc.) - an illustration of the extent of renown of the 007 / Bond name and brand.

However, there are also a number of instances of more explicit, potentially unauthorised use of official IP, of which some examples are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Examples of websites potentially infringing James Bond IP - top to bottom (SLDs given in brackets in each case):

• Potential digital piracy - video (100jamesbond); audio / music (jamesbond-online)
• Promotion of cryptocurrency coins or schemes (jamesbondsol, jemesbond007 [sic], jamesbond)
• e-commerce (jamesbondlifestyle)
• Misdirection / false affiliation (e.g. gambling websites) (mrjamesbond, pkv007bond, jamesbond777aud)
• Other potential unauthorised claim of affiliation (thechampagneofjamesbond)
• Other brand references (e.g. sites pertaining to bail bonds) (bailbonds007, jamesbond007brazoria)

Conclusion

The analysis shows that there already exists a wide range of potential infringements relating to James Bond, comprising a universe which may be set to grow, following the high-profile news stories of the changes of IP ownership, continuing interest in the franchise, and the massive potential growth in spin-offs and licensing opportunities as the IP landscape continues to evolve over the coming years.

As for other popular brands, the IP owners would be wise to monitor the landscape as part of a holistic brand protection initiative, covering the compilation and consolidation of an appropriate domain portfolio (including defensive registrations), securing of appropriate IP protection in relevant product classes and jurisdictions, and a comprehensive programme of monitoring, analysis and enforcement.

Or, we could say...

The spectre of a brand-protection thunderball of problems might scare the living daylights out of the brand owners of the spy who loved me. As the portfolio is transferred from one group to another, we may find that you only live twice to see a requirement for appropriate measures to be put in place.

If you're charged with management of a brand, a key component is the use of a monitoring service to keep a golden-eye on the landscape, providing an overview of infringements for your eyes only. A comprehensive portfolio of IP protection essentially provides you with a licence to kill any such infringements. Following a process of analysis and prioritisation, it is then advisable to consider next steps. Some findings are best left to live and let die, whilst you may take a view to a kill for other more concerning examples. The most problematic infringing sites are those which have no time to die - e.g. those originating from high-risk or low compliance jurisdictions, such as those coming from Russia with love - so it may be prudent to consider escalation measures, in the hope that the infringements die another day, though there may be little more than a quantum of solace in cases where the sites refuse to sky-fall.

Finally, in brand protection, one must also consider that the world is not enough, and that (Dr) no set of measures may be too much - the landscape is continually evolving, so it is always important to be forward thinking, in acceptance of the fact that tomorrow never dies.

References

[1] https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/new-james-bond

[2] https://www.eon.co.uk/james-bond/

[3] https://deadline.com/2025/02/james-bond-amazon-mgm-studios-deal-1236296104/

[4] https://theweek.com/business/amazon-james-bond-new-deal

[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/02/20/james-bond-creative-rights-amazon-mgm/

[6] https://www.ign.com/articles/bond-ip-slop-and-the-fking-idiots-taking-over-007

[7] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/james-bond-amazon-mgm-broccoli-1236147148/

[8] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/oherzfeld_amazonvseveryone-battleforbond-bondvillan-ugcPost-7301317006035734528-vMtL

[9] https://licensinginternational.org/news/the-future-of-brand-licensing-for-james-bond/

[10] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/feb/14/james-bond-in-battle-to-keep-hold-of-007-super-spys-name

[11] Generic top-level domains, or domain extensions (such as .com, etc.)

[12] where '(-)' is an optional hyphen, and '*' is any combination of (or no) characters

[13] SLD in this context refers to the second-level domain name, i.e. the part of the domain name to the left of the dot

This article was first published on 11 March 2025 at:

https://www.iamstobbs.com/opinion/the-man-with-the-golden-gun-explorations-of-james-bond-ip

Br'AI've New World - Part 1: Brand protection 'clustering' as a candidate task for the application of AI capabilities

Introduction

The issue of 'clustering' in brand protection - that is, the ability to flexibly identify the existence of links between disparate findings^[1] from a brand monitoring solution - is one of the great unsolved problems in the industry^[2].

Clustering has a number of key benefits, including the identification of high-volume or serial infringers to serve as priority targets for enforcement and demonstrate 'bad faith' action, offering the potential for efficient bulk takedowns of groups of associated results in a single action, and the building of a full profile of the activity associated with a particular entity through an OSINT (open-source intelligence)-style investigative approach^[3].

In general, there are several characteristics of any finding/result from a brand monitoring programme which can serve as a basis for clustering, some of which will be dependent on the channel or type of content. Domain names are one of the 'richest' sources of such data points (many of which can be determined through standard look-ups), which can include features of the whois record^[4] such as registrant (owner) and registrar contact details, hosting information (e.g. host IP address and hosting service provider), characteristics of the domain name itself (such as name patterns^[5] and TLD^[6]), and the providers of any MX (mail exchange) record(s) (allowing e-mail functionality) or SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate(s) (i.e. the authentication feature allowing the domain to use an https URL), in addition to features of any associated website. Many of these characteristics can also be relevant to other types of general Internet content, and other features may be applicable to content from other channels (such as seller names in e-commerce marketplace listings).

These features can additionally serve as the basis for more generally quantifying the level of potential threat posed by an identified result, which can be a key process in prioritising the identified results (which may, in general, comprise a large dataset), to identify the priority targets for further analysis, enforcement or content tracking^[7,8].

Clustering analysis techniques

The simplest type of clustering analysis technique - and one which is still the only offering by many brand-protection service providers - is that which is based on the use just of a single particular common characteristic of a particular type (i.e. associated with a specific single 'label', such as the registrant name or host IP address) associated with the set of results in question. For instance, if the name of the registrant of a group of sites is the same for each of the examples, then those sites can be determined all to be connected to each other (if that registrant name is suitably distinctive). This very simple approach is really nothing more than can be achieved through manual analysis (essentially, carrying out a series of 'reverse look-ups') and, while it can have value, the extent of this value is often limited.

Clustering becomes more insightful and useful if links can be drawn on the basis of identical (or similar) characteristics associated with different fields (or labels) in the database of pieces of information associated with the set of 'candidate' findings to be analysed. For example, if a particular e-mail address appears in the whois record of some domains, but in the website content of a series of others, the wider set of both groups of findings can reasonably be assumed to be associated with each other. However, these types of insights are generally much harder to obtain, essentially because it is not known in advance where these commonalities may appear. The situation may become even more complex if links must be followed in order to find the common features - e.g. crawling from a marketplace listing to the associated seller information page, to identify company names, addresses, telephone numbers, etc. These types of instance are where artificial intelligence (AI) tools can potentially begin to provide value.

Specific requirements of an AI tool to carry out clustering analysis

Beyond even the initial complexity described above in constructing an effective clustering tool, there are a number of additional points to consider:

1. Distinctiveness / reliability of the features used as the basis of clustering - The point to be made in this case is essentially that some characteristics of a result will be more reliable than others as a basis for clustering that result with others sharing the same characteristic. Features such as e-mail addresses and telephone numbers are (generally) highly distinctive, unique and diagnostic. Others, such as seller names (especially if relatively generic and identified across different platforms) and host IP addresses (in cases where multiple different web-hosting customers may share the use of a single webserver), may be less so. At the other end of the scale, features such as the use of a common TLD (e.g. if we consider a group of sites which just share the use of a common extension such as .com), reference a common privacy-protection service provider in their whois record, or the observation for a group of domains that they simply happen to have been registered on the same day (unless other characteristics suggesting a link are also present) may, in isolation, be poor indicators of an actual connection between the findings. Accordingly, any clustering tool will need to take account of the differences between the various possible clustering criteria, and 'weight' their contribution to the overall 'strength' of any asserted potential link.


2. Identification of variants - In many cases, even when results are linked, the pieces of information pertaining to that link may be presented in different formats across the various findings, so any clustering tool will need to take a 'fuzzy' approach to its matching. For example, the same telephone number may be presented in a variety of ways (e.g. "01223 435240", "01223435240", "01223 435 240", "+44 (0)1223 435240", "44 1223 435240", etc.). Similarly, in many cases, a particular company name may be presented differently in distinct contexts (e.g. the registrar / hosting provider GoDaddy might variably be cited as "GoDaddy", "Godaddy.com", "GoDaddy.com, LLC", etc. - and in some cases, depending on the nature of the variations, the entities might be better considered to be distinct anyway - e.g. "Alibaba Cloud LLC" vs "Alibaba Cloud (Singapore) Private Limited"). There is also complexity of the type that (for example) "badseller123@gmail.com" and "badseller123@qq.com" may or may not relate to the same actual entity.


3. Analysis of rich content types - Further difficulties arise from the fact that Internet content is becoming increasingly 'rich' (in terms of the ways in which data can be presented) and any truly comprehensive clustering tool would ideally need to be able to interrogate all of these areas of content. Examples for consideration might include text, imagery or audio content embedded in pictures or videos (say, text displayed as a watermark), potentially requiring features such as image analysis, optical character recognition (OCR), etc.

Conclusion

The construction of a truly effective clustering tool able to take account of all the factors discussed in this article is likely to be an extremely difficult problem to solve. However, appropriate application of AI capabilities may be able to provide a stepwise approach towards addressing the issue.

The benefits of successfully doing so will be enormous, potentially building insights and efficiencies into the processes of brand protection monitoring, analysis and enforcement which are essentially not available through any 'classic' approaches. Any service provider able to put a compelling solution of this nature in place in the short to medium term - particularly if it also offers other attractive AI or machine-learning features, such as the option for automatic 'tuning' of search parameters to identify and categorise the most significant results, being able to be 'trained' based on analyst feedback on the quality of the outputs, or the implementation of semi-automated enforcement notice production and sending - may find themselves a long way ahead of their field of mainstream competitors.

References

[1] In referring to a 'finding', in this context I refer to any single result (such as a website / its associated URL) identified via a brand monitoring product or service configured to search the Internet for material of potential interest or concern. 

[2] https://circleid.com/posts/20230525-the-millennium-problems-in-brand-protection

[3] 'Patterns in Brand Monitoring' (D.N. Barnett, Business Expert Press, 2025), Chapter 6: 'Result clustering'

[4] The 'whois' record of a domain gives technical configuration and ownership information for that domain.

[5] e.g. the group of domains all with names of the form ketoXXXYYY.TLD (where 'XXX' is a string of (typically six or seven) random alphabetical characters, 'YYY' is a string of three random digits, and 'TLD' is a low-registration-cost new-gTLD extension such as .sbs or .cloud) which were identified as all being part of a health scam campaign in a 2024 study -
https://www.iamstobbs.com/opinion/health-scam-websites-identifying-related-domains-using-clustering-techniques

[6] The TLD (top-level domain) is the domain name extension - i.e. the part of the name after the dot.

[7] 'Patterns in Brand Monitoring' (D.N. Barnett, Business Expert Press, 2025), Chapter 5: 'Prioritization criteria for specific types of content'

[8] 'Patterns in Brand Monitoring' (D.N. Barnett, Business Expert Press, 2025), Chapter 3: 'Brand content scoring'

This article was first published on 5 March 2025 at:

https://circleid.com/posts/braive-new-world-part-1-brand-protection-clustering-as-a-candidate-task-for-the-application-of-ai-capabilities