Tag Archives: legal

Tue 3rd December 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Square Grouper Tiki Bar guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Florida bar filed UDRP despite knowing domain name wasn’t registered in bad faith. Castaways Bar, LLC , owner of Square Grouper Tiki Bar in Jupiter, Florida, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking by filing a UDRP against SquareGrouper.com. When the company opened its bar in 2003, SquareGrouper.com was already registered. The registrant apparently was working on a screenplay by the name Square Grouper, and had already registered a “treatment” ... read more ...
Mon 2nd December 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Amazon.com registers domain names for the delivery-by-drone Prime Air service - Company registers over 40 domains, but can’t get its hands on some key ones. Will your Amazon.com packages be delivered by drone in the future? That’s the vision of Jeff Bezos. And millions have already watched a video (embedded below) of how Amazon envisions it working. Amazon is pretty thorough with defensive domain name registration, and Amazon Prime Air is no exception. I count over forty domain name registrations the company made related to Amazon Prime Air ... read more ...
Wed 27th November 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Google Sued For Trademark Infringement Over Its Hangout Service By Hanginout Damages & Retraining Order Requested - Hanginout, Inc. which describes itself as a San Diego based technology company filed suit against Google this morning over its “hangout” service for trademark infringement, federal unfair competition, and common law unfair competition. In addition to damages Hanginout is asking a judge to grant a temporary, preliminary and permanent restraining order against Google to prevent them from using their Hangout product and name. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Grand Theft Domain Name: Take-Two Interactive loses domain name dispute - Grand Theft Auto publisher fails in case to get GTA.tv domain name. Take-Two Interactive, the creator of the wildly successful Grand Theft Auto video game series, has lost a dispute it filed against the domain name GTA.tv. Take-Two has a trademark for GTA, but it was unable to persuade a World Intellectual Property Organization panel that the owner was trying to take advantage of Take-Two’s mark. iCity Corp, which owns GTA.tv, argued that the unused domain stood ... read more ...
Tue 26th November 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Federal Judge Rules Domain Names Are Not Property Under Virgina Law - A Virgina federal judge has ruled that domain names are not property under Virgina Law. The case is ALEXANDRIA SURVEYS, LLC, , v. ALEXANDRIA CONSULTING GROUP, LLC, (ACG)  Civil Action No. 1:13-CV-00891, United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division and was handed down by District Judge LIAM O’GRADY The case was an appeal from a Bankruptcy court decision, which involved a lot of issues, but we are going to limit our review of the case only as it applied to disucssion related ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
21 village objections have been decided. So distant it’s unpredictable. - It’s difficult to predict the outcome of community objections. As of yesterday the International Chamber of Commerce had published 21 community objection decisions. Objectors have won just four of the cases. Time for new top level domain applicants to rejoice? Hardly. Much like string confusion objections, community objection decisions and how panelists arrive at their decisions are proving to be inconsistent. Community objections are certainly more complicated ... read more ...
Mon 25th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Gold Coast Tourism Corporation guilty of retreat domain name hijacking - Tourism group guilty of trying to hijack domain name from Digimedia. Gold Coast Tourism Corporation Ltd. has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a UDRP over the domain name GoldCoast.com. The case was filed against Digimedia, which was represented by John Berryhill. The complainant, a non-profit that promotes the Gold Cost in Australia, uses the domain name at visitgoldcoast.com. Gold Coast Tourism alleged that Digimedia asked $1 million for the ... read more ...
Fri 22nd November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domains that were theme to fibre difficulty objections could be on reason for a while… - Board considers if there’s any sort of appeal mechanism to new TLD objections. The results of new TLD string confusion objections handled by International Dispute Resolution Centre were a mess. They were completely unpredictable and results were mostly dependent on who the panelist was, not the merits of the case. As a result, both objectors and applicants have filed reconsideration requests with ICANN’s board. The board governance committee has summarily rejected ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Companies aren’t communities for new TLDs, panelist rules - Is Merck a community? It’s a murky argument. An International Chamber of Commerce panelist has issued his rulings in three cases involving the Merck brand. In doing so, he has ruled that companies don’t qualify as communities, at least for new TLD community objections. The three cases were filed by Merck KGaA against Merck Registry Holdings and MSD Registry Holdings and covered two applications for .merck and one for .merckmsd. If you’re confused, let me clear ... read more ...
Thu 21st November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Get a hide look of a new ICANN.org website - A beta of the new ICANN.org website is now live. ICANN is finally getting a new website, not just the minor facelifts it has received in recent years. ICANN Labs is working on a new ICANN.org website and hopes to launch it publicly in February. It is currently running the site in parallel to the existing one at new.icann.org. ICANN Labs is the same group working on experimental projects to help with community participation. Its test projects include ICANN Passport, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
CM.com was deleted and is unregistered…but we can’t have it - CM.com was deleted this year, but is unavailable for registration. If you pop on over to DomainTools and type in the domain name CM.com, you might be surprised to see that it is not registered: But when you visit your domain name registrar, you’ll find out the domain isn’t available for registration. Despite being registered from 1997 until at least the middle of 2013, CM.com has been sent to purgatory. The domain name was apparently deleted by the registrar ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Donuts disses Independent Objector. Panelist disses Donuts. .Medical is dead. - The independent objector has killed Donuts’ application for .medical. Prof. Alain Pellet, the independent objector for the new top level domain name program, has won (pdf) a community objection against Donuts’ application for .medical. The case got off to a bizarre start, with Donuts calling into question Pellet’s impartiality and independence. Donuts pointed out that Pellet has a bias to the medical community and that Donuts’ TLDs make up a large part of ... read more ...
Tue 19th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Panel denies village objections opposite .Hotels applicant - Objectors were upset with single registrant application for .hotels. An International Chamber of Commerce panelist has denied two community objections filed against .hotels applicant Booking.com. The cases were filed by Hotel Consumer Protection Coalition and HOTREC, Hotels, Restaurants Cafés in Europe, and the cases were consolidated. Although there were 7 applications for the .hotel (singular) top level domain, it seems that the groups were concerned about Booking.com’s ... read more ...
Mon 18th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN posts all name collision reports – solely for 25 new TLDs that don’t qualify - .Web, .blog among those not eligible for APD. ICANN has posted the block lists for all new top level domain names that want to pursue the “alternate path to delegation.” New TLDs can launch faster if they choose this option, which requires them to block certain second level domain name registrations, as least in the beginning. Until now, ICANN had been publishing these lists in small batches, so this development will be welcomed by applicants… Except for some ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Gay Objector Strikes Out - ILGA loses three community objections against .gay and one against .LGBT International Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) has lost three community objections it brought against applicants for the .gay top level domain name. The objections were filed against Top Level Design, Top Level Domain Holdings, and United TLD (Demand Media). ILGA is backing a rival .gay bid by dotgay LLC. Panelist Dr. Bernhard Schlink ruled that the gay community is ... read more ...
Thu 14th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Timbermate Products guilty of retreat domain name hijacking - Company never alleged domain was registered in bad faith…just use in bad faith. Timbermate Products Pty Ltd of Nunawading, Australia, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking by a World Intellectual Property Organization panel. The company, which uses the domain name timbermate.com.au, filed a UDRP against the domain name timbermate.com. The owner of Timbermate.com was, at one point, a distributor for Timbermate in the United States. After the distributorship ... read more ...
Wed 13th November 2013
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Troubling: Federal Court Gives ShareTv.com To ShareTv.Org Despite .Com Registered 3 Years Earlier & 7 Years Before TM - In a troubling development for all domain investors, The United States District Court for the Eastern District Of Virginia has awarded the domain name Sharetv.com to the owner of ShareTv.org under a lawsuit brought under the Lanham Act and Virginia’s Unfair Competition Act. (Case No. 1:13-cv-00506, Dkt No. 1) Although ShareTv.org had a federally registered trademark on the term ShareTV, the domain name Sharetv.com was registered three years before the Plaintiff’s own domain name ShareTV.org was  ... read more ...
Tue 12th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
One Del Monte calls a other a Reverse Domain Name Hijacker - You’ve heard of reverse domain name hijacking, but can you RDNH a top level domain name? Del Monte International GmbH has filed its opposition to Del Monte Corporation’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit related to the .delmonte top level domain name. If you’re confused already, let me bring you up to speed. Del Monte used to be one company, but was split into two in the late 1980s. One of the entities (Del Monte International) was able to continue using the Del Monte ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Coffee Bean Direct loses second box opposite CoffeeDirect.com (and no response!) - Online coffee seller fails to snag CoffeeDirect.com through a UDRP for a second time. Coffee Bean Direct’s two attempts to get CoffeeDirect.com through UDRP have been a train wreck. Or maybe a hot coffee spill?Coffee Bean Direct LLC, an online coffee seller, has lost its second UDRP against the domain name CoffeeDirect.com. In both cases the owner of CoffeeDirect.com didn’t bother to respond but still won the case. If you look at the facts, this won’t come as ... read more ...
Thu 7th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The extraordinary box of .pets - ICDR posted two different panelist documents for the same exact top level domain string confusion objection. I’ve had a lot to gripe about the online systems for International Centre for Dispute Resolution when it comes to string confusion objections. One of those gripes was that the decision in Afilias vs. Donuts over .pets suddenly disappeared from the ICDR’s website in August. ICDR updated the case list earlier this week and the Donuts’ .pets decision is ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Independent Objector loses box for .health - Afilias successfully defends limited public interest objection against .health. There were a couple firsts in the new top level domain name program today, all involving one objection. An objection against .health was the first limited public interest objection to be decided, and also the first objection filed by the independent objector to meet its fate. A three person panel found in the favor of .health applicant Afilias. Limited Public Interest Objections were designed ... read more ...
Tue 5th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New TLD field flummoxed by conflict results - Applicants ask ICANN to intervene in objection process. A dozen applicants for new top level domain names have sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN urging the group to step in and fix what they believe are flawed new top level domain objection results. The applicants are questioning the rhyme or reason to objection decisions, including a recent bewildering decision in a community objection against a .sport application. While legal rights objections certainly frustrated some ... read more ...
Mon 4th November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Johnson & Johnson loses box opposite Johnsons.com (again!) - For the second time in ten years, consumer products company Johnson Johnson has lost a UDRP against the domain name Johnsons.com. I first wrote about this case back in July. As I noted at the time, the whois record changed slightly since the domain was registered in 1997, but it’s quite clear that the same group still owns the domain name. Nevertheless, Johnson Johnson used the fact that the registrant company name on whois changed as a way to argue that the registration ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Afilias loses combined fibre difficulty box opposite .mobile - Amazon, Donuts, and Dish DBS prevail in dispute over .mobile. Afilias, the registry that operates the .mobi top level domain name, has lost a consolidated string confusion objection against applicants for .mobile. This is, I believe, the first objection in which more than one applicant agreed to have the case heard on a consolidated basis. .Mobile applicants in the case included Amazon.com, Donuts, and Dish DBS. Panelist M. Scott Donahey determined (pdf) that .mobi ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
What was TruTag Technologies meditative in this UDRP? - Company goes after domain names registered many years before it started using the trademark in question. I just don’t get it. TruTag Technologies, Inc. just wasted money filing a UDRP against the domain names trutag.com, truetag.net, and truetag.org. The company sells microtags for authentication and anti-counterfeiting. It uses the domain name TruTags.com, which it probably chose because TruTag.com had already been registered for several years when it started its ... read more ...