Tag Archives: legal

Wed 28th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Noss: use new TLD auction deduction to move some-more internet to Africa - Elliot Noss argues that auction proceeds should be used to fun wireless internet in Africa. Tucows CEO Elliot Noss, along with “internet in a suitcase” advocate Sascha Meinrath, have penned an op-ed for Slate arguing that new TLD auction proceeds should be used to grow internet access in Africa. In ICANN, Make a Difference, the pair suggests that the auction process for new top level domains might bring in $100 million to ICANN. Since the new TLD program is already ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN extends protections to Red Cross, Olympics, and IGOs - New gTLD Program Committee approves two measures designed to protect big non-profit brands. ICANN Board’s New gTLD Program Committee has approved two resolutions granting added domain name protections at the second level to special interests the Red Cross, Red Crescent, and the International Olympic Committee, and lays the framework for protecting IGO names and acronyms. The resolutions come after the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council gave a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Announcement on daub about that new TLDs will get priority diagnosis in ICANN’s Powerball - Which new TLDs will get to skip to the front of the queue? We’ll find out soon. Fortunately for new top level domain applicants, the chances of getting a top spot in December’s top level domain “prioritization draw” are much better than winning tonight’s $550 million Powerball lottery. Unfortunately, tickets to the draw cost quite a bit more (and I’m not talking about the $100 ticket fee.) But many applicants still have questions about whether certain ... read more ...
Mon 26th November 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICE Seizes 132 Domains & This Time Its Global, Not Just .Com & .Net - ICE today announced that 132 domain names were seized for selling counterfeit products. However not only were .com’s and .net’s targeted this time. While 101 of the domain names were with a registry located in the United States, 31 ccTLD’s domain names were seized as well. Domain names ending in  .eu, .be, .dk, .fr, .ro and .uk were all seized. “This operation is a great example of the tremendous cooperation between ICE and our international partners at the IPR Center,” said ICE Director ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Audi loses quarrel for AudiCity.com domain name - Audi will have to stick with audi-microsites.com for now. Car company Audi has lost a dispute at World Intellectual Property Organization over the domain name AudiCity.com. Earlier this year Audi launched its first “Audi City” showroom in London and it wants to open 20 more Audi City showrooms by 2015. But the domain name AudiCity.com was registered by a California man in 2001. The registrant argued that he registered the domain name because it is a play on “audacity”. ... read more ...
Wed 21st November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Panel Tells GTMS to GTFO with RDNH - GTFO, that’s RDNH! A World Intellectual Property Organization National Arbitration Forum panel has found satellite services company Global Transmission Media Solutions (GTMS) guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. GTMS filed a UDRP on the domain name GTMS.com, which was registered in 1999. That’s well before GTMS’ purported first use of the acronym as a brand. GTMS suggested that the domain owner’s non-use of the GTMS.com and two other domains he owned (which ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Huh? Australia gives 129 GAC early warnings - Whining down under. Yesterday over 200 GAC early warnings to new top level domain applicants were published. The biggest complainer? Australia. The country filed early warnings on 129 top level domain names covering everything from .baby to .weather. ’cause you know, weather is such a controversial thing. One of Australia’s big peeves is that groups want to use generic terms exclusively. That’s its complaint about both .baby and .weather. Johnson Johnson wants ... read more ...
Tue 20th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN threatens registrar for unwell to respond to UDRP requests - Registrar not responding to UDRP verification requests, says ICANN. ICANN has sent a notice of breach to Grand Cayman domain name registrar Bargin Register, Inc., for failing to respond to UDRP verification requests. In a letter dated November 19 (pdf), ICANN claims that Bargin Register has frequently failed to respond to UDRP verification requests from multiple UDRP providers. The latest issue appears to involve the domain name Rexrothdistributors.com, which was ... read more ...
Fri 16th November 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
In a Case of First Impression Lewis & Lin Obtains Attorney Fee Award in Personal Name Cybersquatting Case - In a case of first impression under 15 U.S.C. 8131 , the personal name cybersquatting provision of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), the law firm of Lewis Lin obtained a court order awarding attorneys’ fees as the prevailing party under the ACPA. Section 8131 of the ACPA imposes civil liability on “[a]ny person who registers a domain name that consists of the name of another living person, or a name substantially and confusingly similar thereto, without that person’s consent, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tucows loses UDRP for Marker.com (but it ain’t over yet) - Domain name already subject to court case. World Intellectual Property Organization panelist David Perkins has ruled that Tucows’ registration of Marker.com is cybersquatting, and the domain should be transferred to Marker Völkl (International) GmbH. Marker Völkl owns the domain name marker.de. But don’t expect the domain name to be transferred to the maker of ski equipment anytime soon. Marker filed the case in July and Tucows sued for declaratory judgment ... read more ...
Thu 15th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ad network says scammers are impersonating it regulating cybersquatted domain names - Q Interactive says scammers are duping publishers into signing ad agreements. Chicago based online advertising company Q Interactive has filed a lawsuit alleging that someone is impersonating it to dupe web site publishers out of advertising revenue. The unknown perpetrators have used domain names very similar to Q Interactive’s real web address, QInteractive.com, in their scheme. According to the suit (pdf), the scammers have registered the domain names qinteractiveagency.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Uh-oh: Pritz out during ICANN over dispute of interest - The face of ICANN’s new TLD program abruptly resigns. Kurt Pritz was the face of ICANN’s new top level domain program. Literally. It was Pritz who defended ICANN on Capitol Hill. It was Pritz who spoke to the press and at conferences. Now he’s gone. In a shocking announcement this morning, new ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé announced that he had accepted Pritz’ resignation. Here’s the full announcement: To the ICANN Community, Regretfully, I have accepted the resignation ... read more ...
Wed 14th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
OrderInn.com sues Google Ventures-backed Ordr.in over name - Company claims trademark infringement. Las Vegas company Order Inn, Inc., which uses the domain name OrderInn.com, has sued startup Ordr.in for trademark infringement. Order Inn is a food service provider that connects hotels without their own room service to nearby restaurants — hence the “Inn” instead of “In” in its name. (I give branding credit to the company; it also owns OrderIn.com.) Ordr.in is a Google Ventures-backed company that helps restaurants ... read more ...
Tue 13th November 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
After 5 years French Court Finds Registrar EuroDNS & Registry AFNIC Not Responsible For TM Infringing Domain Registrations - Back in 2008, 13 French companies filed suit against the registrar EuroDNS and the French Association for Internet Naming in Cooperation (hereinafter: AFNIC), which runs the .Fr ccTLD The suit alleged that EuroDNS and AFNIC were at fault for allowing third parties to register 129 domain names infringing on their respective Trademarks. They sued EuroDNS for € 2.9 million and demanded that AFNIC be ordered to  freeze or block of the domain names. The Court of Appeal upheld the ruling of the lower ... read more ...
Mon 12th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
MyICANN is a large step brazen for clarity during ICANN - System notifies users about new content on ICANN.org. ICANN launched a beta of MyICANN during last month’s meeting in Toronto. The site, hosted at MyICANN.org, provides notifications about new documents published to ICANN’s web site. It sounds simple and it is. It also only alerts you to documents that have been published, and these same documents have always been published to the site. Despite this, I believe MyICANN is a huge boost for transparency at ICANN. Even ... read more ...
Fri 9th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Tarheel Take-Out guilty of retreat domain name hijacking over Takeout.com - Food delivery service guilty of abusing proceedings. When Tarheel Take-Out, LLC filed a UDRP against the domain name Takeout.com, it was a pretty good bet that it would be found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. A three member World Intellectual Property Organization panel has just turned in its decision and has indeed determined that Tarheel Take-Out is guilty of abusing the UDRP process. The panel ruled that the domain name was not similar to a mark in which ... read more ...
Thu 8th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NextDoor.com sues owners of NextDoor.cm - NextDoor.cm owner has claimed NextDoor.com stole his business idea. Neighborhood social networking site NextDoor.com has sued the owner of NextDoor.cm — but this isn’t a simple allegation of cybersquatting. The company filed the suit (pdf) in U.S. District Court in San Francisco to put an end to what it says are baseless claims that NextDoor.com stole its business idea from defendant Raj Abhyanker. You can read some details about Abhyanker’s previous claims ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Buff.com spared by UDRP panel - Panel rules that buff.com likely registered as a dictionary keyword domain name. A three person World Intellectual Property Organization panel has ruled against Original Buff, S.A. in a case brought against the domain name Buff.com. The complainant sells head wear, and Buff.com has shown sponsored links related to headwear in the past. Buff argued “it is practically impossible to maintain that the Respondent’s choice of buff.com is a pure coincidence and not intentional.” The ... read more ...
Wed 7th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Inventa tries to invent the possess perspective of UDRP (but loses) - Company makes some big leaps in claiming Inventa.com domain name is cybersquatting. A World Intellectual Property Organization UDRP panel has just handed down a decision over the domain name Inventa.com. The complaint was brought by Inventa International Group. The owner of the domain is an apparently defunct U.S. technology consulting company called Inventa Technologies, Inc. Inventa Technologies registered the domain name in 1995 and set up its company. It filed ... read more ...
Sun 4th November 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Another Federal Courts Says Purchasing Trademarked Keywords For PPC Ads Is OK - A story appearing in Lexology.com, today discssed the case of CollegeSource, Inc. v. AcademyOne, Inc.,. which was decided by The Federal Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in the case of . The Court dismissed the plaintiff’s claim for trademark infringement and unfair competition holding that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate that the defendant’s purchasing trademark terms of its competitor in keyword advertising was unlikely to result in consumer confusion. In this case the defendant ... read more ...
Fri 2nd November 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Wow: Google Loses UDRP On Woogle.com & Domain Holder Didn’t Even Respond - In what could be the strangest decision of the year, Google Inc. just lost a UDRP on the domain name woogle.com and the domain holder didn’t even respond. The decision was handed down by the National Arbitration Forum The one member panel found that Woogle.com was not confusingly similar to Google.com “”” Typosquatting (without more) does not appear in the UDRP as a ground for transferring or cancelling a domain name. ” “Even if typosquatting were in the UDRP, it is difficult to see how ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Coach Wins $267 Million Dollar Verdict & Is Awarded More Than 570 Domain Names in Counterfeiting Law Suit - According to SecuringIndustry.com, the hand bag manufacturer Coach was awarded by anIllinois Federal Court, $267 mimmion judgment against hundreds of Internet sites selling counterfeit versions of its products. The US company also got ownership of more than 570 domain names used by counterfeiters to sell handbags, purses, shoes and other accessories falsely claiming to be authentic Coach products. All of the domains used the word ‘Coach’ in the domain name. The company’s general counsel Todd ... read more ...
Wed 31st October 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Breaking: Rosetta Stone To Drop Its Lawsuit Against Google For Selling Ads Under TM Keywords - According to BusinessWeek.com, Rosetta Stone Inc. (RST), has  agreed to drop a lawsuit it brought against Google Inc. (GOOG) for selling keywords under its trademarks to other companies for search-engine advertising. “The companies agreed that all claims in the infringement case will be dismissed, according to a filing today in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. ” “Google and Rosetta Stone have agreed to dismiss the three-year-old trademark infringement lawsuit between them and to meaningfully ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ubisoft only wants JustDance.com - Company files UDRP for domain name. [Update: it turns out the domain was owned by Quantec, LLC/Novo Point, LLC, which is the Ondova portfolio in bankruptcy. The case was terminated by the panel.] Ubisoft’s official web site for its popular Just Dance game is just-dance-thegame.ubi.com. That’s a pretty sucky web address, so it’s no wonder that it has filed a UDRP to get the domain name JustDance.com. Before you scream “but it’s a generic”, you can blame ... read more ...
Tue 30th October 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Garage doorway domain evidence goes to court - Garage door wars. A couple weeks ago I wrote about a UDRP in which a panelist who knew little about internet marketing awarded the domain name BoiseGarageDoor.com to a garage door company in Boise. Now the respondent in that case has filed a lawsuit to block the transfer (pdf). It also claims that the UDRP complainant Boise Garage Door, LLC is slandering and libeling it. According to the suit: Upon information and belief, on October 5, Defendant or his counsel left ... read more ...