Tag Archives: legal

Thu 27th December 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Marchex defends EuroBaby.com opposite Irish company - Company can keep domain acquired with UltSearch portfolio, panel rules. Marchex has successfully defended the domain name EuroBaby.com in a URDP proceeding brought by an Irish company. Eurocycles Eurobaby and Eurotrek Group Limited of Dublin, Ireland sell bikes and strollers. One of its brands, EuroBaby, sells strollers, car seats, baby furniture, and other baby goods. Its site for EuroBaby is EuroBabyNursery.com, so it’s no wonder it wants the better EuroBaby.com ... read more ...
Mon 24th December 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Appeals Court Overturns Bankruptcy Sale Of Baron/Ondova Domains & Axes The Receivership - The Federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the bankruptcy auction (pdf) of the 150,000+ domain name owned by Jeff Baron and Ondova and found that Receivership set up by a lower court should never have been set up in the first place. You may recall that 150,000+ domain names of Jeff Baron and Ondova was sold by a bankruptcy court just last month for $5.2 Million dollars. The court which stayed the bankruptcy sale just two weeks ago by this ruling now ruled that  no closing may ... read more ...
Fri 21st December 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Iran: .Gay domain would widespread hatred - Republic of Iran wants to stop .gay top level domain. The government of Iran has filed an early late warning to applicants for the .gay top level domain name. Iran thinks that a .gay top level domain will “spread of hatred and hostility in the society”. And it doesn’t think that’s an ironic statement. It further states: We believe that the right approach in new gTLD program should be based on creation of healthy environment in all the societies. Thus for ... read more ...
Thu 20th December 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
No surprise: UDRP row denies explain on InteriorDesign.com - Magazine publisher loses case for valuable InteriorDesign.com domain name. A three person National Arbitration Forum UDRP panel has denied Interior Design Media Group, LLC’s claim on the domain name InteriorDesign.com. As I wrote about in October, the domain name was been owned by domain investor P. A. Gordon for about 15 years. Gordon owns some great domain names and explained to the panel that he buys generic domains that may have commercial value. He lists laptops.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UDRP row got BidPal.com box right, though complainant’s lawyers did it a disservice - Ultimate decision in case is right, but complainant’s case could have been stronger than it was. It’s no wonder that BidPal, Inc wants the domain name BidPal.com. It has the decidedly inferior domain name BidPalNetwork.com. In October it filed a UDRP against the owner of the domain name. A three member UDRP panel ruled against the complainant, arguing that it did not prove lack of rights/legitimate interests in the domain and that it was registered and used in ... read more ...
Wed 19th December 2012
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Funny: UDRP complainant says registration in bad faith is “not applicable” - Software company files UDRP and says registration in bad faith was “not applicable” to the case. Just when you thought you’d seen it all… Swiss digital publishing software company BlankPage AG has lost a UDRP decision for the domain name keetab.com. Keetab is the name of one of its software products, which appears to have been launched this year. So its UDRP against a domain name registered in 2004 was dead on arrival. But you won’t believe what the company ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
“Internet Villain” Stephen Conroy wants purpose on ICANN ATRT - Australian politician behind censorship plan wants to be part of ICANN review team. A politician who, together with his government, was named “Internet Villain of the Year” in 2009 by an ISP trade group, wants a role on ICANN’s Accountability Transparency Review Team (ATRT). Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband in Australia, submitted his nomination to ICANN on December 14. Conroy is perhaps best known in internet circles for wanting to set up a firewall ... read more ...
Tue 18th December 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Green gets corner on .eco in new TLD priority draw - .Green draws are better overall, but that doesn’t mean it will come to market first. When ICANN planned “digital archery” to determine the order in which it would review top level domain applications, there was a benefit to applying for a domain other people were applying for: all applications would be moved up in the queue to the top spot in the contention set. You could say the opposite for the prioritization draw that happened yesterday. Basically a draw ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why Swiss International Airlines withdrew the .swiss application - Faced with government approval, airline gives up fight for .swiss. While it should come as no surprise, here’s an official response to Domain Name Wire’s inquiry to why Swiss International Airlines withdrew its top level domain application .swiss: After further discussions with the Swiss Government, we decided to withdraw our application and will support their community application. We will work closely with them in the future. The airline was in a contention ... read more ...
Mon 17th December 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Getty Images Loses Bid To Trademark Photos.com In The EU, Again - In a long running battle Getty Images just lost its bid to trademark the term Photos.com with the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (OHIM). On September 15th 2009, Getty Images (US), Inc. , filed an application for registration of a Community trademark at the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (OHIM) on the word mark PHOTOS.COM. On August 2nd, 2010, the examiner refused the application for registration on the grounds that ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Stirring adult a beehive: a many gross UDRP of 2012? - Perhaps the worst UDRP filing of 2012. A single member World Intellectual Property Organization UDRP panel has handed down a ruling in favor of the current owner of Beehive.com. In doing so, panelist Richard W. Page got the decision right. But he also failed. This case is one of the most egregious abuses of the UDRP I’ve ever read, and Page should have found the complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking even if the respondent’s attorneys didn’t ask ... read more ...
Fri 14th December 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
LiveOne Group loses second UDRP explain in as many months - Company goes after domain name registered before its brand even existed. Let’s hope that LiveOne Group, a streaming media company, merely got some bad legal advice on this one. It just lost a UDRP for LiveOne.com. The current registrant picked it up in 2007, at least a few years before LiveOne Group came to market. So LiveOne Group had no chance of winning. The owner of LiveOne.com was represented by Ari Goldberger. LiveOne Group is now 0-for-2 in UDRPs with its ... read more ...
Wed 12th December 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Predictions for subsequent week’s new TLD lottery - We’re pretty much guaranteed that something won’t go as planned. Tickets for next week’s new top level domain “prioritization draw” went on sale this morning. The draw will take place on Monday on Los Angeles. Despite the big money at stake for applicants, I predict there will be a few snafus. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened in the new TLD process. But this time it might technically be at the fault of an applicant rather than ICANN. Here ... read more ...
Tue 11th December 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
UDRP filed opposite dual minute domain Yu.com - Are Yu serious? A UDRP has been filed against the owner of the two letter domain name Yu.com. The case was filed by Two Way NV/SA at World Intellectual Property Organization. It’s unclear who owns the domain. It has been protected by Moniker whois privacy for the past two years. Prior to that it was protected by NameView privacy, which means there may be a connection to Kevin Ham. The most recent non private registration record I can find at DomainTools is a 2006 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
iBoats.com sues owners of iBoatCovers.com - Company tries to protect its descriptive brand. iBoats.com has filed a lawsuit (pdf) against a Georgia company for alleged cybersquatting and trademark infringement. The company claims that Shoplio’s iBoatCovers.com web site infringes on its registered tradmearks for iBoats and iBoats.com. Shoplio runs a number of niche online stores, somewhat similar to how CSN Stores/Wayfair used to operate. It has at least six online stores dedicated solely to covers, including ... read more ...
Thu 6th December 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
United/Contential Sues Owner Of Untied.com Used As A Gripe Site After 15 Years - According to the ChicagoTribune.com, United and Continental airlines, filed suit on Nov. 19, in both the Federal Court of Canada and Superior Court of Quebec. against the owner of Untied.com. The domain name Untied.com, has been owned by a Canadian professor  for 15 years and airs complaints from disgruntled United Airlines passengers and employees. The filed allege the complaint site violates the airline’s copyright and trademarks. It also alleges the site violates the privacy of senior airline ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Brand Protection Companies Need To Do Better Job Protecting Their Clients On TM Dropping Domains - We have written many times about instances where Brand Protection companies fail to protect their clients by not registering or acquiring domain names before the launch of a new product or service. Today we are calling them out for not even attempting to re-register dropping domains which have TM implications. We have been watching some potential Trademark infringing dropping domains for some time now and are pretty shocked to see that none of the usual brand protection companies have even attempted ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Not a win-win: FranklinCovey sued for behest on Franklin.com on Google Adwords - Seven Habits company faces lawsuit over Adwords bidding. Perhaps the eighth habit of highly effective people should be “not bidding on competitors domain names in Adwords”. Franklin Electronic Publishers has filed a federal lawsuit against FranklinCovey because the Seven Habits-based time management company is bidding on the term “Franklin.com” on Google Adwords. Franklin.com is owned by the plaintiff, which sells products somewhat related to what Franklin ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Citigroup sues to get CityCard.com, a domain it won in UDRP - South Korean court blocked transfer of domain after UDRP; Citi files suit in the United States. Last September a National Arbitration Forum panel ruled that Citigroup should get the domain name CityCard.com. [Update: the court entered a default judgment for Citigroup and the domain has been transferred.] But the owner of the domain name sued in South Korea court to block the transfer. Now Citigroup has filed an in rem action against the CityCard.com domain name in ... read more ...
Wed 5th December 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Confirmed: IDNs will be prioritized in new TLD queue - IDN backers get their wish. Applicants for internationalized domain names will get prioritized to the front of the new top level domain name queue, ICANN confirmed today. ICANN confirmed this information in a webinar about the gTLD prioritization draw. The prioritization draw, which will determine the order in which initial evaluation results are released, as well as the priority applications go through other stages of the process, takes place in Los Angeles on December ... read more ...
Tue 4th December 2012
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ICANN asks justice to boot Name.Space lawsuit over tip turn domains - ICANN claims Name.Space released ICANN from claims when it applied for top level domains in 2000. ICANN has (not surprisingly) filed a Motion to Dismiss the lawsuit brought by Name.Space against ICANN for its new top level domain program. Name.Space runs an alternative root with a number of its own top level domains, such as .art and .book. Back in 2000 Name.Space applied to ICANN to run 118 of these top level domains in the main root. ICANN’s starting defense: ... read more ...
Mon 3rd December 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Marc Randazza wins UDRP opposite lady he sued final week - Lawyer wins UDRP over his personal names, but battle still looms over family domain names. Last week I wrote about how first amendment attorney Marc J. Randazza had filed a lawsuit against detractor Crystal Cox over a number of domain names she registered. In addition to registering domain names including Marc Randazza’s name, she also registered domain names referring to Randazza’s wife and three-year-old child. Randazza alleges that Cox registered the domain ... read more ...
Fri 30th November 2012
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Verisign shares dump 15% on agreement change - Verisign stock nosedives on news of new contract without price increases. Shares of Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) are down 15% in early trading after the company announced that its contract to run .com had been renewed without price increases. Verisign’s contract renewal with ICANN allowed it to raise prices 7% in four of the six years of the contract. That would have allowed the company to raise the price from $7.85 today to $10.29 after four years. But then the U.S. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
U.S. goverment only gave .com domain owners a $10.78 taxation break - Cost of holding domain for six years decreases by as much as $10.78. Hey, don’t say the U.S. government never did anything for you. They just gave domain name owners a $10.78 price reduction over the term of the next .com contract by eliminating price increases. Assuming that Verisign would have increased prices in the first four years of its contract (it had the right to do it in 4 of 6), that equals a $10.78 savings per domain that you would have held for the ... read more ...
Thu 29th November 2012
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Lawyer Marc Randazza sues derogator Crystal Cox in weird case - Lawyer involved in domain disputes files his own cybersquatting lawsuit to protect his family’s names. Now this is a bizarre case. You may have heard of first amendment lawyer Marc Randazza before. He’s by all accounts a colorful character, and he was the one who represented the owner of glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com against Glenn Beck in a UDRP. It sounds like at some point he caught the attention of “investigative blogger” Crystal Cox. In ... read more ...