Following the official announcement of Lego Dimensions on Thursday morning, a random Internet surfer might have expected a trip to LegoDimensions.com would lead to some additional official information on the game. Instead, for a brief period, the domain redirected users to coverage of the announcement on gaming news site Polygon. The hows and whys of this situation touch on some interesting issues of brand management, domain registration rules, online trademark law, and journalistic ethics.

The story started yesterday, when rumors started swirling that Lego and Warner Bros. were planning to enter the "toys to life" category with their own Skylanders-style game, called Lego Dimensions. In trying to track that rumor down, Polygon Deputy News Editor Michael McWhertor said he checked to see if various domain registrations or social media accounts hinted at the game's actual existence.

"I saw that legodimensions.com wasn't registered, which kind of baffled me," McWhertor told Ars Technica in an interview. "If that was really the name of the game, why hadn't WB locked down that domain?"

McWhertor went ahead and registered the domain for himself, partly out of curiosity and partly to see if there was any sort of hold on the domain, he said. "I was very surprised to actually get it," he said. "I thought either something had to have gone wrong or Lego Dimensions was just a working title, or inaccurate... I considered, for some reason, that the Lego Group didn't actually have much interest in acquiring the domain and that, rather than have it be used by some cybersquatting link farm, I'd just grab it and point it to our coverage."

As it turns out, the name wasn't inaccurate. By Thursday morning, McWhertor found he was sitting on the domain name for a major new gaming brand . Upon hearing the news, McWhertor linked the domain to Polygon's coverage, tweeted about what he thought was a funny Internet joke, and moved on.

Within minutes, McWhertor said, he received an e-mail from Lego Group's IP representatives, saying they wanted the domain. Twenty minutes after receiving that e-mail, McWhertor said, he contacted his registrar and had the ownership transferred. The domain now points to WB's official Lego Dimensions site.

"I had no intention of 'cybersquatting' it or trying to get anything out of WB or the Lego Group," McWhertor said. "My only real thought about benefiting from it was 'Well, maybe this will have really great SEO for a Lego game?'... Mainly, I was just dumbfounded that a URL for a potential product like that was available."

A branding snafu, a legal nonstarter

McWhertor isn't alone in being dumbfounded about the domain's continued availability as recently as Wednesday. "From a branding/PR perspective, I cannot believe Lego let such a critical, obvious thing slide," gaming PR professional Ed Zitron told Ars. "The moment you know what a product is called, you buy the domain. You buy the domain the moment someone has the idea. Domains cost $10."

"Yes, you're running the risk of someone saying 'Wait, what is Lego Dimensions,'" Zitron continued. "That isn't a negative thing. If that's why someone decided they'd not buy it, to 'hide' the project, well, good going buddy. You blew it." (Representatives from Warner Bros. and Lego have yet to respond to a request for comment from Ars)

The people behind Lego Dimensions may have actually lucked out in having a relatively harmless prankster like McWhertor register the domain and hand it over without question. If a squatter had secured the name instead, Warner Bros. and Lego might have had to go through a lengthy and perhaps expensive hassle to get it back.

Companies that want to take over a domain for their trademarked brand can either sue under the Anticybersquatting Protection Act (ACPA) or go through arbitration with ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDNDRP). Going through the courts tends to take much more time and money but can lead to the payment of actual damages, in addition to the return of the domain.

Sometimes these cases are relatively clear-cut, as when IGN had to give up the N64.com domain when Nintendo came asking for it in the late '90s ("legal papers were involved" IGN's Doug Perry later recalled). But there are situations where both sides might have a valid claim to a domain. For example, a company named Halo Lighting managed to secure halo.com well before Microsoft wanted the domain for its gaming series. The lighting company still holds the domain to this day, despite being the much less famous use of the brand name, at this point.

At any rate, none of those potential legal issues apply in this case, since the domain was quickly returned to the brand owners. Law of the Game blogger and attorney Mark Methenitis tells Ars that while what McWhertor did was technically improper, "I'm not sure there's much in the way of repercussions. It was a very tiny, short-term benefit to Polygon at Lego's expense, but it would be almost impossible to compute a real 'damage' from that, and the cost of an ACPA suit wouldn't be worth the recovery. That said, if the journalist's name was Leg O'Dimensions, then that journalist might even have a claim to keep the domain, but I can't say I've read anything tagged to Mr. O'Dimensions on Polygon."

McWhertor said he didn't consider any of these potential legal issues when registering the domain. "It certainly wasn't something I was trying to secure with the intent of hurting the folks at Lego or Warner Bros., and I always knew that if someone from there took issue with the ownership of the domain, I'd give it up immediately," he said.

Becoming part of the story

In the aftermath of McWhertor's brief domain takeover, the journalist's actions have come under attack from a number of commenters on forums and social media. "It struck me as funny at the time, but I'm having a difficult time explaining why that was!" he said. "Some people thought it was not so funny [though]... naively, I didn't expect this much blowback for registering a domain."

Some commenters have suggested McWhertor was benefiting from insider information, using embargoed advance knowledge of the announcement to steal the domain and benefit his site. McWhertor denies this, saying he was working off of publicly reported rumors of the game's existence available to anyone (Polygon Editor-in-Chief Chris Grant confirmed that the site had no advance warning of the announcement).

Others have suggested that by registering the domain, even as a joke, McWhertor was unprofessionally inserting himself into the story of the game's announcement, rather than simply reporting on it. This is a criticism McWhertor says he's listening to.

"Well, the perception of that is just as bad as any actual real unprofessionalism.... so I don't blame anyone for bristling at me purchasing the domain registration, and I'll have to deal with the fallout, obviously," he said. "But I strive to maintain a level of professionalism and adhere to Polygon's published ethics policy at all times. Clearly some people have different opinions about it, and I'm taking that to heart. It's a little difficult to separate the actual issue from some people's' interest in taking swipes at Polygon as an organization, but I'm processing the feedback."

Polygon EIC Chris Grant told Ars that the site "probably got about tens, maybe hundreds of [pageviews]" from the brief control of the domain registration, a paltry amount in exchange for a domain that cost actual money. "There was no extortion. There was no squatting. The domain is in the hands of Lego. I fail to see this as a scandal."

Not all outside observers see the opportunistic domain registration negatively, though. "I respect Michael McWhertor snapping it up and directing it to their coverage," Zitron said. "It's mercenary. Some may say it's a dick move, but at the same time, why not?... It's effectively the Internet equivalent of giving someone a wet willy, except the wet willy gives you traffic on the Internet."