Tag Archives: legal

Wed 21st January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Larry Seltzer Struggles with “Whois Identity Theft” - eWeek writer can’t get copycat whois record changed. I’ve heard people complain about “whois identity theft” before. Essentially, this is when someone uses your name on their whois record. You can imagine how this could potentially be troubling for you, depending on the domain name. But in the case of eWeek writer Larry Seltzer, the “identity thief” went several steps further. First, the domain that is being spoofed is LarrySeltzer.net. Second, the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What Domainers Should (and Shouldn’t) Do Post Kentucky - Here are some things for domainers to consider now that the Kentucky case has been overturned. The Kentucky Court of Appeals has overturned a trial court’s ruling that the state could seize domain names associated with online gambling. The Court of Appeals ruled that domain names weren’t “gambling devices”, which was part of the statute used to justify seizing the domains. As Michael Berkens pointed out, this is a narrow victory. Electronic Frontier Foundation ... read more ...
Thu 15th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ari Goldberger Gets Win for FullTerm.com - Domain lawyer Ari Goldberger gets another win, but the panel creates a tough hurdle for reverse domain name hijacking. Domain lawyer Ari Goldberger successfully defended FullTerm.com in a UDRP dispute at National Arbitration Forum. The case pitted Hologic Inc, maker of a device to determine if a woman is likely to give birth before full term, against domain owner Vertical Axis Inc. Hologic didn’t apply for a trademark to the term “FullTerm” until 2006, claiming ... read more ...
Tue 13th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Marchex Named in Complaint to FTC - Amended complaint from consumer groups targets call tracking technology. The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG) amended a petition to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today to launch an investigation into mobile advertising and privacy concerns. The report calls out domain name company Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) for its VoiceStar subsidiary. According to the complaint: …Marchex surreptitiously gathers data ... read more ...
Mon 12th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Telnic Trips Up with Baidu.tel - Company touts first-come-first-served .tel rights, but it sends a mixed message. Telnic, the company behind the new .tel top level domain name, sent me a press release today touting that Baidu.tel had been awarded to Baidu Europe, a company that uses Baidu.eu. .Tel has a first-come policy for claiming trademark domain names during the sunrise message. The implicit message is that Baidu, the Chinese search engine, didn’t get the domain because it didn’t apply ... read more ...
Sun 11th January 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
POOL.com Top Drop List Is Full Of Trademark Infringing Domains - Everyday pool.com sends out a list for the Top Deleting Domains for the next day. If you check out Pool.com “Top Deleting Domains” list for tomorrow, I think you will see a common theme, trademark infringing domains. Actually out of the 30 domains listed, over half, 18 by my count, are bang on trademark infringing domains. I understand that if a domain is scheduled to drop, it’s going to drop, but why advertise them and send out a newsletter highlighting such crap? Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NamePros Cited in ISO.mobi Domain Arbitration - Content on popular domain forum cited as evidence of bad faith. Domain name forum NamePros was cited in the recently decided arbitration case for ISO.mobi at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). According to the complainant, International Organization for Standardization ISO, the owner of ISO.mobi offered some of ISO’s other trademarks in domain names for sale: An offer to sell the disputed domain name was made on the website “www.namepros.com”. ... read more ...
Fri 9th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Arbitration Doesn’t “Get More” Crazy Than This - Denmark company tries to grab GetMore.com domain name at arbitration. Picture this. You own an online electronics store called GetMore.dk. After a few years you realize you probably should own GetMore.com as well. So you find out the owner of the domain has listed it for sale on Sedo. You try to negotiate but the owner wants too much. Who you gonna call? WIPO. That’s what GetMore A/S, owner GetMore.dk did. It filed an arbitration case for GetMore.com. It ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Notifies Registrars About Domain Tasting Changes - VeriSign sends notice about changes to add grace period rules. As required by a new ICANN policy, VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) has notified its registrars about changes to the Add Grace Period policy. These changes were made to limit the practice of “domain tasting”, which is registering a domain and returning it for a refund within the grace period if it doesn’t deliver enough traffic. The text of the notice is below: Please be advised that ICANN formally announced ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Celebrity Domain Names: Meg Whitman, Conde Naste [Updated] - Two celebrity domain name scuffles get media attention. Can’t bid for her name. Two stories hit the online world today about pseudo-celebrities battling to get their names as domain names. First, there’s an Associated Press article about former eBay CEO-turned-politician Meg Whitman. She filed for WIPO arbitration to get MegWhitman.com. The case was terminated because WIPO determined she was not famous enough for her name to be a brand. [The original version ... read more ...
Thu 8th January 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Asset Protection Company Urges All To Register & Host Domains Outside Of US - The Sovereignsociety.com, a group whose fundamental purpose is to give advice regarding asset protection, issued an advisory yesterday, telling its members, that in light of the Kentucky Domain Seizure, they should register and host all of their domain names outside of the US. In its post, the SovereignSociety, in calling the Kentucky seizure action a “trade war”, since the Commonwealth is attacking 141 online gambling sites, while protecting the online gambling site operating in Kentucky, TwinSpires.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameKing Still King of Domain Tasting - Registrar NameKing still biggest domain taster, but numbers declining. Domain registrar NameKing.com is still the king of domain tasting. NameKing, a subsidiary of Oversee.net, continues to drop nearly 1 million .com domains during the add grace period each month. As I predicted, ICANN’s budget measure to stem domain tasting curtailed the practice but did not eliminate it. The graph below shows the number of .com domains NameKing dropped during the add grace period ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ping Golf Loses Ping.me Domain Name Arbitration - Golf equipment manufacturer loses questionable attempt to acquire domain name. When I saw that Ping.me was in arbitration at National Arbitration Forum, I correctly assumed that Ping Golf was behind the dispute. Ping Golf has been aggressive acquiring other domains including “Ping” in the past. The good news is domain owner Pingify Networks Inc. won the battle for the domain it paid $12,500 for in the .me sunrise auctions. The bad news is the interpretation ... read more ...
Wed 7th January 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The .ORG Registry Adopts A Domain Anti-Abuse Policy; Allows For Domain Cancellation: Are Your .Org’s At Risk? - Today The Public Interest Registry (“PIR”), the company which runs the .Org registry, announced a Domain “Anti-Abuse Policy”, effective 5 February 2009. In announcing this policy PIR is taking a strong stand against what is defines as Domain Abuse and it gives itself the right to cancel,  any .org, domain registration which is considered to be abusive. From the announcement: “”””Abusive use(s) of .ORG domain names should not be tolerated. The nature of such abuses creates security ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Companies Have Fiduciary Responsibility to Lock Down Domain Names - A simple, cheap method to lock down domains exists. Public company CTOs need to get on the ball. CheckFree is warning 5 million customers about its domain name mishap last month where its nameservers were changed to forward its web site. All the perpetrators did was get a password to CheckFree’s account at Network Solutions, log in, and change the nameservers to point to another server. This same thing could happen to other companies, and public company executives ... read more ...
Mon 5th January 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Advertises to a Mainstream, Update on New TLDs - Ad in The Economist likely the first of many. As I finished the Christmas Double Issue of The Economist, I flipped through the final pages of ads and was surprised to see this: Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) promised to do mainstream marketing for the launch of new top level domains, and this is the first ad I’ve seen. The tag line on the ad reads “New Generic Top Level Domains – Openness, Change, Innovation” I hope ICANN takes ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dough! Mrs. Fields Loses 1800cookies.com Case - Cookie and gift seller loses arbitration for domain 1800cookies.com. Cookie and gift company Mrs. Fields has lost an arbitration case at National Arbitration Forum for the domain name 1800cookies.com. Mrs. Fields has a trademark for 1-800-Cookies, which is its primary phone number for ordering. It also uses the web address 800cookies.com. But the arbitration panel found that the owner of the domain registered it before Mrs. Fields had rights to the trademark. This ... read more ...
Wed 31st December 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2008 Domain Dunce Awards: Fired.com - “Sorely misguided” complainant loses bid for Fired.com. [This is the second Domain Dunce award for 2008. See the first one for Verizon.] What do you do if you want a domain that’s already registered and you don’t want to pay for it? Furthermore, you have no chance of winning a UDRP arbitration because the domain was registered years before your first use of the domain? And the domain is generic? And it isn’t infringing on your brand? According to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Peaches Uniforms Wants a Bite Out Of Peaches.com - Uniform company files arbitration to get Peaches.com domain. Peaches.com wouldbe sweeter. Peaches Uniforms, a seller of fashion uniforms and scrubs to women in the medical industry, has filed an arbitration request with National Arbitration Forum to gain control of the domain name Peaches.com. Peaches Uniforms, founded in 1987, filed for a trademark on the term Peaches for medical uniforms in 2006. The trademark was granted in April 2007. Peaches.com was originally ... read more ...
Tue 30th December 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Know When To Hold & Know When To Fold - David Castello, pointed out to me today an update on a story we wrote about a back in October, about a Steven Thiele, a body builder, who registered a several domains of Indian tribes in Florida; miccosukeetribeofindians.com, miccosukeetribeofindiansofflorida.com and a domain named after tribe chairman Billy Cypress, billycypress.com. In the October story, we pointed out that the domain holder was offered and turned down $100,000, insisting he wanted $500,000 for the domains.  At the time we questioned ... read more ...
Mon 29th December 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
MartinLutherKing.org: Make’s a Best Case For Defensive Domain Registrations - A story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution point out how important it is for all businesses and “famous” persons to engage in defensive domain registrations. The story tells the tale of MartinLutherKing.org, which is owned and operated “””by a white supremacist group called Stormfront, described by one watchdog organization as the largest “hate group” online. It has used King’s name for its Web address since 1999.””” Unfortunately according to the article if you type the term ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2008 Domain Dunce Awards: Verizon - Verizon likes to play both sides of the fence. For that we give it an award. With just a few days left in 2008, I thought I’d write about a couple of the more egregious stories in domain names this year. Think of it as the dumbest moments in domains. The first winner is telecom giant Verizon (NYSE: VZ). Verizon, a member of Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), aggressively pursues cybersquatters that infringe on its trademarks. There’s nothing wrong ... read more ...
Wed 24th December 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Court Awards Verizon Record $33 Million Dollar Judgment In a Cybersquatting Case - In the largest cybersquatting judgment ever, a federal court in the Northern District of California has awarded Verizon $33.15 million in a case in which an Internet domain registration company tried to take advantage of Verizon and Verizon customers by using Internet names chosen to be easily confused with legitimate Verizon names. The default ruling came in a case filed by Verizon against OnlineNIC, a company based in San Francisco that had unlawfully registered at least 663 domain names that were ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Scarlett Johansson Wins ScarlettJohansson.com Domain Name - Actress wins domain name at WIPO. Actress Scarlett Johansson has won rights to the domain name ScarlettJohansson.com in an arbitration decision at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Johansson has starred in numerous movies including Lost in Translation, Match Point, and The Ghost Whisperer and been nominated for several Golden Globe Awards. The details of the domain name arbitration case are rather interesting. Apparently the owner of the domain, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Verizon Wins $33 Million in Cybersquatting Case - Verizon wins default judgment against top 15 domain registrar. Customers of OnlineNic, Inc., a top 15 domain registrar with over 1,000,000 domains registered, should be concerned about the state of the registrar after a judge ordered the company to pay $33 million to Verizon (NYSE: VZ). A judge entered the default judgment of $50,000 for each of the 663 domain names OnlineNic owned that allegedly infringed Verizon’s trademarks. OnlineNic didn’t respond to the ... read more ...