Tag Archives: legal

Wed 9th May 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Zynga Sues Over “Ville” - It appears Zynga believes it owns the exclusive right to any game ending in the term: “Ville” According to Gameranx.com,  Zygna filed a federal law suit last Friday against Kobojo the maker of the game, PyramidVille. Zynga says in their complaint: “Facebook users are likely to believe, erroneously, that PYRAMIDVILLE is a member of Zynga’s ‘VILLE Family of Games,” In a statement Zynga said: “Zynga’s “Ville” family includes many well-known games, including FarmVille, CityVille ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICM Responds To The Manwin Anti-Trust Amended Complaint On .XXX & Asks The Court To Dismiss It Again - ICM filed a motion to dismiss Manwin’s complaint for Anti-Trust on the .XXX extension for a second time yesterday. (You can read the motion to dismiss again here). Here are some of the highlights of the Motion to Dismiss: “”Even though it is their second try, Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint fails to state a claim and should be dismissed.” “The Amend Complaint is (like the original Complaint) nothing more than a transparent attempt to use the antitrust laws to eliminate a new internet ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN refunds thought was a reticent move - Offering an additional $5,000 refund just draws more attention to ICANN’s top level domain system failure. ICANN’s offer to refund 100% of applicant fees if new gTLD applicants pull their applications was a dumb move. First, this offer isn’t a big deal. It’s an offer of $5,000 more (just 3%) than the refund schedule previously in place offered if you withdrew your application before names were revealed. Second, will this offer actually prompt people to recall ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
“If we don’t sell me your domain for $2,000, I’ll record a UDRP” - Company that makes UDRP threat found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. “If you don’t sell me your domain for $2,000, I’ll file a UDRP against the domain name.” That’s effectively what a United Kingdom company threatened against the owner of the domain name edgePOS.com, according to the findings of a recent UDRP decision. John Henderson (Holdings) filed a UDRP complaint against Xiaodong Zhang of Austin, Texas, over the domain name. Zhang said he registered ... read more ...
Mon 7th May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Owner of Despair.net sues to retard send to Despair, Inc. - Now that’s demotivating. The owner of the domain name Despair.net has filed a lawsuit (pdf) against Despair, Inc., maker of “demotivational” products, to block a UDRP decision on the domain name. Despair, Inc. filed a UDRP against the despair.net domain name on March 20. The case was weak, but the registrant (Darren L. Dittrich) of the domain name apparently didn’t receive notice of the dispute until after the decision was handed down. Since Dittrich didn’t ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Another 3 minute .xxx domain name mislaid in UDRP - BGZ.xxx given to bank in Poland. .xxx UDRP cases present some interesting scenarios that are not common amongst other top level domains. For example, if the .xxx domain name at issue is just three letters and it doesn’t resolve, how do you prove that it was registered in bad faith? How can the complainant prove that it was the intended “victim” of the registration? This was first brought up in a case for HEB.xxx. HEB.xxx didn’t resolve, so it would have been ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why BuyDomains’ lawsuit over FACI.com creates sense - Lawsuit over FACI.com is about more than just a single domain name. In April I wrote about how a WIPO panel “stole” FACI.com from BuyDomains (NameMedia) in a faulty UDRP decision. I also mentioned that I hoped BuyDomains would turn to the courts to over the issue. On Friday George Kirikos noticed that the company did indeed turn to the courts, filing a lawsuit in Massachusetts. The suit is fairly bread-and-butter for declaratory and injunctive relief. NameMedia ... read more ...
Sat 5th May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN’s $350 million windfall - ICANN has already collected $350 million in new TLD application fees. And that number will grow. One of the mysteries of ICANN’s new top level domain process is why it’s been so shy about releasing the total number of applications received so far. It released the number of application system registered users, but not the number of applications. That just changed: ICANN announced it had 2,091 applications completed or in progress when it took the application system ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Google wants to obvious associated links functionality - Lookout, YARPP. Are you a blogger that uses Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)? There are a lot of similar plugins (hence the funny name). But Google apparently thinks it’s novel, as the company has filed a patent application (pdf) for precisely this. United States patent application 20120109932, titled “Related Links”, covers the process of identifying keywords within an article and then displaying related articles (or searches) based on those keywords. In ... read more ...
Fri 4th May 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UDRP Thinks 32x.com Is “Identical or Confusingly Similar” to TM For 32Red & Gives Away The Domain - Well another day another horrible decision A three member UDRP panel just gave away the domain name 32x.com to the Trademark holder of 32Red. I have no idea of how 32x.com is “Identical or Confusingly Similar”  to a trademark for 32Red but that is what the panel found.  The panel also disregarded the fact that the complaints waited some six years before bringing the complaint. John Berryhill represented the domain holder. The complaint was brought by two Complainants. The first complainant ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
BREAKING: BuyDomains.com Takes The FACI.com UDRP Decision To Federal Court - Last week we told you that BuyDomains.com lost a UDRP on the domain name FACI.com in a poorly reasoned decision. Yesterday Rare Names, Inc, d/b/a BuyDomains.com filed a federal court action in the Massachusetts District Court against the UDRP complainants, Foster, Andrew Co., Inc. and FACI Industries Corporation. Since a UDRP is not technically appeal-able, but a new action, BuyDomains asked the court to block the transfer and for a declaratory judgement that it did not infringe on FACI trademark The ... read more ...
Thu 3rd May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Should ICANN can digital archery? - Given the latest data, ICANN should consider changing how it batches new TLDs. With 1,268 registered users for ICANN’s new top level domain application system, it’s clear there will be over 1,000 unique top level domains going through the new TLD process. That means we’ll have “batching“, where approximately 500 domains at a time go through the full evaluation and addition to the root. The current plan for determining which 500 applications go into each ... read more ...
Wed 2nd May 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Mastercard loses another Priceless case - Mastercard is devaluing its “Priceless” mark. Last Friday I wrote about how Mastercard lost UDRP cases for pricelessistanbul.com and pricelessamsterdam.com. It just lost another case (pdf), this one involving pricelesslondon.com, pricelessparis.com, pricelessnewyork.com, pricelesslosangeles.com and pricelessmexico.com. Why is Mastercard suddenly going after PricelessCity domain names? It appears to be related to its move to associate its “Priceless” trademark ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Here’s how most any TLD generates for ICANN - A look at registry fees and transaction fees. ICANN’s contracts with registry operators for existing top level domains represent a hodgepodge of one off arrangements. In its recently released draft budget, ICANN included a table showing how it forecasts its revenue from each of these contracts for FY 2013. Seeing the data side-by-side is very intriguing. It’s also interesting when you add in how much ICANN collects in transaction fees from registrants/registrars ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hey buddy, it’s substantially too late to heading .NYC - A good way to waste $325. The guy who just recently wasted his money filing a trademark application for .music is at it again. Joseph Walker DBA ExtraWeb Ent just filed trademark applications for .nyc and .shop. New York City has already announced plans for the .nyc domain name and has selected a registry partner to bring it to market. Numerous companies want to bring .shop to market as well. Both of these applications will be summarily rejected by the U.S. Patent ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN: 105 new TLD field might have had information exposed - ICANN releases data about new top level domain application system bug. 105 applicants for new top level domains might have had the filenames of some of their application documents and their username exposed, ICANN revealed today. The non-profit also revealed that 50 applicants might have been able to view these details. Of course, just because filenames or usernames were exposed doesn’t mean that someone actually saw them or knew what they were seeing. And even ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
RipOff Reports files the possess Ripoff Report - Site files complaint over .info domain name. The controversial RipOff Report web site that allows people to leave reports of alleged ripoffs and scams has filed a “report” of its own. The owner of RipOff Report has filed a UDRP case against the registrant of RipOffReport.info. RipOff Report’s web address is RipOffReport.com. RipOffReport.com is one of the top 1,000 sites in the U.S. according to Quantcast. Until recently RipOffReport.info was registered to a ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why is ICANN still usually budgeting for 500 new TLD applications? - Main ICANN budget still assumes 500 applications. In January ICANN released its framework for the FY 2013 budget (which begins in July). Its framework for new TLD revenue was based on 500 applications for new top level domains. ICANN just published its draft budget and now it’s budgeting for… only 500 applications. I realize these things have a long lead time, but this is ludicrous. It’s quite clear there will be over 1,000 applications for new top level domains. Releasing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How ICANN will spend $12 million some-more of your income subsequent year - …and that doesn’t include new TLD costs. ICANN’s latest proposed budget segments out the core ICANN functions and the new top level domain program. But even its core functions budget are slated to grow by nearly $12 million next financial year compared to what it expects to spend in the current year (FY 12). Here’s why. Contractual Compliance: $2.4 million increase Let’s face it, ICANN’s contractual compliance has historically sucked. Fixing the problem ... read more ...
Tue 1st May 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UDRP Filed on A 3 Letter Domain, SMA.com Owned By A Non-Domainer - A UDRP has just been filed by SMA Solar Technology AG for the three letter domain, SMA.com Here’s the really scary part The owner of the domain is not a domainer. The domain is owned by Specialized Micro Architects, a company’s who initials match the domain SMA. The domain was first registered in 1995. The oldest record on DomainTools.com for the domain is from 2001 and at that time the current domain owner owned the domain. The domain does not currently resolve and Screenshots.com had nothing ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
5 ISP’s In Britian Are Ordered To Shut Down The Pirate Bay - The High Court in England ruled today that 5 of the UK’s largest internet service providers (ISP’s) have been ordered to prevent their subscribers from accessing the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay. The five ISP’s are Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media. According to zdnet.co.uk, blocking will “come into place over the course of  the next few weeks” “The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale. Its operators line their ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Owner of SMA.de files UDRP opposite SMA.com - Spinning the wheel in UDRP roulette. SMA Solar Technology AG has filed a UDRP case with World Intellectual Property Organization for the domain name SMA.com. SMA.com belongs to Specialized Micro Architects. It was originally registered in 1995 and currently has an expiration date of 2017. The oldest whois record at Domain Tools shows that Specialized Micro Architects has owned the domain since at least 2001, although it may have been the original registrant. The most ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.XXX registry and many other domain companies conduct to INTA assembly subsequent week - There’s money in brand protection. 9,000 people are expected to attend the International Trademark Association (INTA) annual meeting in Washington, DC May 5-9. Some of the topics on the agenda for next week include domain names and how companies can protected their brands in an expanding top level name space. There will be a lot of domain name companies in attendance. Here are some that are exhibiting: 101domain.com DomainTools GoDaddy ICM Registry (.xxx registry) Key-Systems Marksmen ... read more ...
Mon 30th April 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Hermes Gets $100 Million Dollar Damage Award Against 34 Sites Selling Fake Goods & Judge Orders De-Indexing - According to sfgate.com, A Federal Court in New York just awarded Hermes International $100 million dollars in damages against 34 websites that sold fake copies of its goods. The fake goods were for “at least nine Hermes products including Birkin and Kelly handbags, wallets, watches, belts and jewelry”. Some of the websites were: HermesBags- Outlet.net HermesBirkin-Bags.org HermesOutletStore.Com “If plaintiffs discover new domain names registered by the defendants containing one or more of ... read more ...
Fri 27th April 2012
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Social Networking Online Protection Act (SNOPA) Introduced To Protect Users From Having To Divulge Personal Info - Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced legislation today to protect users of social networking sites from having to divulge personal information to employers, schools and universities. The legislation protects people already employed or enrolled, and those seeking employment or admittance, or those facing disciplinary action. “Social media sites have become a widespread communications tool – both personally and professionally – all across the world.  However, ... read more ...