Tag Archives: legal

Thu 28th August 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Arbitration Inconsistency: FoodEmporium.com/.net/.org - Think UDRP panels are inconsistent? Here’s proof. If you think UDRP panel decisions are inconsistent, look no further than three cases involving New York grocer The Food Emporium. It filed three separate actions under UDRP for FoodEmporium.com, FoodEmporium.net, and FoodEmporium.org. It won .org but lost the other two. There are reasons for the differences, including the registrant of .org not responding to the complaint. But if you read the decisions you’ll ... read more ...
Tue 26th August 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DNN.com: History Behind Domain Name News’ New Domain - Domain Name News has scored the domain DNN.com. But there’s a story behind the domain. Last week domain news site Domain Name News announced that it had acquired the domain name DNN.com for use with its web site. This is a great domain and the team at DNN deserves a tip of the hat. Earlier today I was reviewing UDRP decisions and came across a three character domain decision found in favor of the respondent. As I read the case, it hit me: this is the domain DNN.com, ... read more ...
Fri 22nd August 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Big Companies Go After .Mobi Domain Names - This stems from this commentary and many you have posted in the past. No matter what the occasion, no matter what little ray of good news there is about .mobi, you have to place your own biased slant on .mobi. It is clear, very clear, that you don’t like it, have no use for it, and don’t care to hear about about it. Yet, it is good for the confrontations and good for the controversies it stirs up therefore good for the rankings. Previously, I also had to ask or remind you to look ... read more ...
Thu 21st August 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Arbitrator: Fired.com Complainant “Sorely Misguided” - World2Work Corporation loses Fired.com claim; panel has harsh words for company and lawyer. A one person panel has found in favor of the owner of Fired.com in a bizarre UDRP case. World2Work Corporation and founder Scott R. Sargis, which runs the web site Fired.tv, filed a UDRP with National Arbitration Forum to get the domain name Fired.com. This is despite not registering the trademark “Fired” until five years after Fired.com was registered. After questioning ... read more ...
Wed 20th August 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The UK is Going After File Sharers - Thousands of people in the UK, suspected of sharing music, films and games over the Internet will be pursued through the courts for damages, lawyers for entertainment companies said on Wednesday. London-based law firm Davenport Lyons said it will apply to the High Court to force Internet service providers to release the names and addresses of 7,000 suspected file sharers. They could be subject to civil action in the courts under Britain’s copyright laws. David Gore, a partner at Davenport Lyons, ... read more ...
Tue 19th August 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Giants Play Ball for GiantsBaseball.com - Major League Baseball continues aggressive campaign for team names. Major League Baseball and the San Francisco Giants want to to get their hands on GiantsBaseball.com. The domain is owned by a Carmel, California man and was registered in 1999, and is subject to arbitration at National Arbitration Forum commenced on August 15. Although the Giants aren’t playing as well as its neighbors the Los Angeles Angels, it should have better luck obtaining this domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Max Levchin’s Slide Loses Domain Name Challenge - Widget company loses UDRP arbitration for 128 domain names. PayPal co-founder Max Levchin and his internet widget company Slide have lost a UDRP decision to obtain the domain SlideTV.com and 127 other associated domain names. Slide has raised over $50 million to date, and the last round was rumored to have been raised at a valuation north of $500 million. The company provides widgets for use on sites such as Facebook, and some of these widgets include video. The ... read more ...
Mon 18th August 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Mygazines.com Causing Uproar In a Publishing World - I have read many stories this week about Mygazines.com a website that allows people to copy and upload popular magazines that are currently on newsstands. Visitors can read high quality digital copies of dozens of current titles, including People, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Health and The Economist, just to name a few, in their entirety. The site, with some 16,000 registered users, is a “flagrant” violation of copyright laws, according to legal experts  but it is run by an offshore company ... read more ...
Fri 15th August 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Hero.com Wins Reverse Hijacking WIPO Decision - John Berryhill won on behalf of his client a reverse highjacking finding in a recent WIPO case. The case bought by a Swiss company which is a “”large manufacturer of consumer foods, which it markets under the trademark and business name HERO. The Complainant was founded in Switzerland in the late 19th century. Its mark and trade name were derived from the prefixes of the names of its two original founders. From the 1980s, the Complainant expanded its business into various countries of Europe, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Old Media’s Dirty Secret: Impression Fraud - Click fraud is an issue because it’s measurable. What about fraud with dead tree media? There’s a lot of focus on click fraud. Click fraud is admittedly a problem with online ads, especially on content networks where individuals can profit. But companies that avoid advertising online because of click fraud are fooling themselves. If they advertise in old media a.k.a dead tree media, they’re getting taken to the cleaners every day. Consider advertising in ... read more ...
Thu 14th August 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Hit with Another Suit For Fraud From PPC Program: Is this Final Straw For Domain Parking? - According to a report in Media Post Today, Google has been hit with a fraud lawsuit from its parked domain program, which serves pay-per-click ads on Web pages for a third time this summer. This newest case, a potential class-action lawsuit, filed this week in federal district court in Chicago, was brought by a container company,  JIT Packaging. The case joins a putative class-action lawsuit filed in San Jose, Calif. last month by Hal Levitte, an attorney who took out search ads, and one brought ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Guest Article: How Do we Become a UDRP Arbitration Panelist? - A look at the qualifications of UDRP arbitration panelists. [Editor’s note: a few weeks ago a couple readers, who were distraught by a recent domain dispute that seemed to be decided unfairly, asked what it takes to be a UDRP panelist who decides domain disputes. I asked Enrico Schaefer, an attorney with Traverse Legal, PLC, to write an article about the UDRP arbitration qualification process.] Domain name disputes are important matters for both trademark holders ... read more ...
Wed 13th August 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ITWorld: Typosquatting for Corporate Espionage - It seems that security wonks are finally catching up to the dangers of “typo” domains. If an article in ITWorld is any indication, security pros haven’t seen typosquatting as a big threat to businesses. They view it as a marketing/legal problem of someone profiting off the company’s trademark. The only security issue they see is phishing. But as the article points out, typo domains get their fair share of typo’d emails, too. Well, duh. This is something ... read more ...
Tue 12th August 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Spam, Malware and Forged Sites, Still on a Rise Despite Arrests - According to a report released today by the Marshal Threat Research and Content Engineering (TRACE) report for the first half of 2008, cyber criminals are using ‘blended attacks’ to distribute malware and links to hacked websites via email on an unprecedented scale. Unpatched browsers are putting more than 45 percent of Internet users at risk when they visit legitimate Websites infected with malicious code. Three botnets are responsible for 75 percent of all spam, pumping out billions of messages ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Chicago Olympics in 2016? The Games have Begun Online. - Chicago Olympics committee wants to get Chicago2016.com. The Olympic focus right now may be in Beijing for the summer Olympics, but there’s already an Olympic battle in Chicago. Chicago is in the running for the 2016 Olympics and the Chicago 2016’s United States Olympic Committee (USOC) uses Chicago2016.org as its web site. It wants to get Chicago2016.com and has filed for arbitration with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to get the domain name. This ... read more ...
Mon 11th August 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Stupid Press Release of a Week: Blu-RayOutlet.com - Nothing screams “trademark infringement” like a press release. Add this one to the bonehead press release of the year department. “Web publisher” James Moore is auctioning off the trademark domain name Blu-RayOutlet.com and told the world about it in a press release. Blu-Ray Disc, of course, is a trademark. And I doubt any UDRP panel would let this one slip through. At the TRAFFIC auction in Orlando, BlueRay.com sold for $30,000. After the sale, an investor ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What are Milk Duds? Hershey’s Says It’s Chocolate. - Hershey’s wins MilkDuds.com domain name in National Arbitration Forum decision. When you hear the word “Milk Duds”, what comes to mind? Most people probably think of the milk chocolate covered caramel candy. The owner of MilkDuds.com tried to argue that it had a line of clothing called Milk Duds, with milk referring to cow designs and duds referring to clothing. Hershey, the licensee and manufacturer of the tasty candy, prevailed in arbitration and has won ... read more ...
Sun 10th August 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Toyota.Me Sell for 90K: Why Shouldn’t a Registry Be Liable for Profiting From a Sale of Trademark Infringing Domains? - The .ME registry just sold toyota.me for the whopping price of $90,025. Not only is it the highest price ever paid for a .me it is agoing to be a litigation nightmare for the new owner. We all expect that Toyota.me will draw a federal lawsuit or a WIPO action in the near future. If Toyota waits say a year and then files a federal lawsuit against the registrant, they will ask for damages including all money the registrant  made from use of the domain. My question is then, why not sue the registry ... read more ...
Thu 7th August 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
State Fund Insurance Nailed for Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Workers compensation company fails at attempt to steal SFM.com domain name. [Please note that there is more than one company that goes by the name “State Fund Insurance”. This article refers to the company that provides workers’ compensation insurance in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and South Dakota.] State Fund Mutual Insurance, a company providing workers’ compensation insurance in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and South Dakota, has been found guilty of reverse domain ... read more ...
Tue 5th August 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
New Type of Lawsuit is Brewing Against Domainers and Advertisers - There’s a new type of lawsuit coming against PPC advertisers and domainers, about search marketing and the right to bid on trademarked or just competitive terms. In this particular case Nike sued a New Hampshire outdoor sporting goods retailer, Eastern Mountain Sports, which does not sell any Nike clothing, for bidding on the term “Dri-Fit” in Google’s advertising system. Dri-Fit is a trademark of Nike. So when a user clicks on an EMS ad after searching for Dri-Fit, she is driven back to ... read more ...
Sat 2nd August 2008
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Be prepared for a limit hunt with these tips - This guest post was written by Richard Douglas. His blog is called Too Many Secrets. If you travel a lot, you should prepare yourself to be searched and asked a few questions. Mike wrote about laptop and cell phone search and seizure before the Paris meet-up. The US Customs and Border Service has posted their official policy here. It happens all the time and it is nothing to be alarmed about. Many countries have broad search authority, not just the US Border Service – try entering and departing ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Bush Won’t Give adult US Oversight of Internet though Would Obama? - As you are aware it was reported Thursday by the Intellectual Property Watch the Bush Administration has no intention of giving up control of the central root servers that control the internet. This was not new news.  The Bush Administration has turned down requests to give up the control in the past few years. However as we all know they Bush term ends in just about 5 months. So the real question is what happens then? More specifically would Obama give up control of the root servers to say switzerland? I ... read more ...
Thu 31st July 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wicked Fashions Thinks it Owns The South Pole (.com) - Company files UDRP for generic domain name. Who owns the South Pole?A clothing company thinks it does.Photo from Wikimedia Commons The onslaught of companies trying to steal generic domain names continues. The latest attempt is from Wicked Fashions, Inc., a clothing brand that has a couple trademarks for “SouthPole” for its clothing lines. The company wants to get its hands on SouthPole.com and filed a complaint through Nation Arbitration Forum that commenced ... read more ...
Wed 30th July 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Future Media Architects Prevails Against Equifax for EFX.com - Company wins three character domain dispute. After losing a UDRP for the generic domain name LH.com to airline Lufthansa, Future Media Architects (FMA) has won a case against credit heavyweight Equifax for EFX.com. FMA claimed that Equifax decided to come after the domain name because it saw FMA had lost a couple other acronym domain name cases: Complainant delayed bringing this action for five years and only brought it when it appeared that Respondent had become ... read more ...
Fri 25th July 2008
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
World2Work Releases Statement About Fired.com UDRP Case - Company claims rights to domain because prior owner has not used it. After Domain Name Wire posted a story about the Fired.com UDRP case and contacted World2Work Corporation, the complainant, World2Work and its attorney released a statement about the case. The company claims that it should have rights to the domain name based on its 2004 trademark filing and the fact that the current owner of the domain hasn’t used it since it was registered in 1999: “When we ... read more ...