Tag Archives: legal

Mon 18th July 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Former ICANN Chairman Joins Minds + Machines - Peter Dengate Thrush joins publicly traded company poised to profit from new top level domain names. That was quick. Less than a month after pushing through a vote approving the new top level domain name program at his last meeting as ICANN Chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush has joined a company applying for new top level domain names. Dengate Thrush will join Top Level Domain Holdings (parent company of Minds + Machines) as Executive Chairman. His compensation package ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Court: Above.com May Be Responsible for Customers’ Domain Names - Judge sides with Verizon, settlement in doubt. A federal district judge has dealt a blow to Above.com in a lawsuit brought against it by Verizon. Chief United States District Judge Audrey Collins has denied Above.com’s motion to dismiss charges of contributory cybersquatting. Above.com and the other defendants have accepted responsibility for registering and monetizing typos of Verizon’s brand names, but argued they shouldn’t be responsible for domain names ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Baby Battle: Babies411.com Beats Baby411.com - Say that three times fast. The publishers of the Baby 411, Toddler 411, and Expecting 411 series of books have tried and failed to get the domain name Babies411.com through arbitration. Alan and Denise Fields d/b/a Windsor Peak Press have sold over 300,000 copies of their popular Baby 411 book and maintain a web site at Baby411.com. The book was originally published in 2003. In 2009 an Austin woman started a site at Babies411.com. Naturally, it was about baby ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Owner Can Keep ChrisFarley.com (For Now) - Company that says it has rights to the Chris Farley name loses domain name dispute. A company claiming to own the intellectual property rights to the late comedian Chris Farley’s likeness has bombed in an effort to get the domain name ChrisFarley.com. Make Him Smile, Inc., claims that Chris Farley’s family granted it intellectual property rights to Chris Farley’s name upon his death. It filed a complaint with Nation Arbitration Forum to get the corresponding ... read more ...
Sun 17th July 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Arbitration for Twitter Typo Twiter.com Terminated, Then Refiled - Massive Twitter.com typo case terminated, then refiled. An arbitration case at World Intellectual Property forum over the domain name Twiter.com has been terminated, only for the company to file a second case. Cases are typically terminated when the domain owner agrees to hand the domain name over to the complainant. In this case it appears the case may have been terminated and then refiled after the domain name registrar disclosed the owner of the domain name. The ... read more ...
Fri 15th July 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Warner Bros Wants HappyFeet2.com Domain Name For Its Upcoming Sequel - Company files for arbitration to get domain name. Warner Bros is planning a sequel to its 2006 hit Happy Feet, and this time around it wants a good domain name for its movie web site. The company has filed a complaint with National Arbitration Forum against the owner of the HappyFeet2.com domain name. Domain arbitration cases usually take 1-2 months, so they should have the domain name in time for the November theatrical release. The domain name was actually originally ... read more ...
Thu 14th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Guest Post: There’s A Reason They’re Called Domain Names: The Perils of Selecting Generic Names For Your Online Company - This is a guest post written by Torin A. Dorros, Esq., who defended Advertise.com against a lawsuit for trademark infringement among other claims arising from AOL.com over its ownership of Advertising.com The article is being published unedited and it’s an excellent article that all domainers should read, maybe twice as it quite relevant not only to this case but all generic domain names. There’s A Reason They’re Called Domain “Names” The Perils of Selecting Generic Names For Your Online ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Demand Media Loses Another UDRP - Company hit with third UDRP loss of the year despite offer to transfer domain name at no charge. Demand Media has another UDRP loss, despite its best efforts to close the case without a decision. The case was filed by Universal American Corp for the domain name todaysoption.com. If you follow UDRP cases closely, this might look familiar. The complainant won a UDRP for the exact same domain name in 2009. But it managed to let the domain name expire after gaining control ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Law Firm Found Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking After Filing “Astonishing” Case - Law firm files “baseless” case to get four letter domain name. I really hope a new law firm that seeks to “break with routine thinking in the legal industry” doesn’t have an intellectual property practice. Denmark lawfirm IUNO Advokatpartnerselskab has lost a UDRP for the IUNO.com and has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. The domain name was registered in 2000; the law firm just opened its doors this year. Panelist Tony Willoughby had ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WIPO Panel Censures Law Firm for Misleading Panel - Panel blasts law firm for either trying to mislead panel or being “inexcusably careless”. Last year a World Intellectual Property Organization panelist called a case represented by law firm Novagraaf Nederland a “flagrant abuse” of the UDRP. In that case, the law firm told the panel that its client had been in business from 1994 but didn’t disclose that it had just recently changed its name to reflect the domain name at issue. Novagraaf Nederland also ... read more ...
Wed 13th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Domainer Gregg Ostrick Survives a Dissenting Opinion & Wins A UDRP ON hmwn.com Represented by John Berryhill - Holy Mother World Networks of Toronto, Canada, brought A URDP against domainer Gregg Ostrick, of GNO, Inc. on the domain name HMWN.com who was represented by John Berryhill. Holy Mother claimed that the 4 letter domain name represented their name which they had trademark rights to and that the domain holder showed bad faith by parking the domain and having a for Buydomains.com for sale link on it. Holy Mother owned the .net version of the .com domain they brought the UDRP on Here are the facts and ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Children’s Book Author Loses Pinkalicious Domain Dispute - Pinkalicious author is red in the face. Victoria Kann, author of the popular children’s book series Pinkalicious, has lost a domain name dispute for Pinkalicious.com. Kann filed the dispute last month with National Arbitration Forum. There was a fatal flaw in her case: the domain name was registered well before she started publishing the book series. Kann argued that she had rights in the “Pinkalicious” mark dating to 2004 when she entered into a contract to ... read more ...
Tue 12th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
DinersClub Loses UDRP Bid for 4 Domain Names Containing The Word Diner & Card - Its rare you see a big name trademark holder lose a UDRP against one defendant for several similar domain names, but that’s just what happened to Diners Club  when they filed a UDRP against Green Free who owned several .NL domain names having the words “diner” and “card” in them: dinercadeaucard.nl dinercadeaukaart.nl, diner-giftcard.nl, dinergiftcard.nl, and dinergift.nl Here are the relevant facts and conclusions by the one person panel: “The defendant denies that the DINERS Brands ... read more ...
Mon 11th July 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cricket Communications Reaches Settlement Over Cricket.com - Parties working on settlement documents to resolve trademark infringement lawsuit. Cricket Communications and Cricket.com owner Global Cricket Ventures have reached a “settlement in principle” over the parties’ trademark infringement suit. Cricket Communications filed the suit in February alleging that Cricket.com was charading as a cricket sport site but was no more than a site created to take advantage of the wireless carriers’ trademark. The company alleged ... read more ...
Fri 8th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
WSJ: ISP’s May Slow Down Connection Speed of File Sharers: Welcome To The “Copyright Alert System” - According to WSJ.com, Internet users who share pirated movies and music may soon be getting a warning from their ISP  that detail alleged copyright infringement and threaten to slow their Web connections if they don’t stop. This program already has a name: The Copyright Alert System (The Copyright Alert System is a 36 page memorandum which you can download here) Among the ISPs that have pledged to implement the new policy are Comcast Corp., ATT Inc., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cablevision Systems ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
LivingSocial Gets Irish - Daily deals site gets LivingSocial.ie domain name. LivingSocial has a new home on the web in Ireland: LivingSocial.ie. .Ie is the country code domain name for Ireland. Last month the daily deals site filed for arbitration to get the domain name. Until now it has been offering deals in Ireland on its main LivingSocial.com web address. The case has been terminated and the owner transferred the domain name to LivingSocial’s parent company, Hungry Machine, Inc. Groupon ... read more ...
Thu 7th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Judge Refuses To Grant Apple An Injunction Against Amazon’s Use Of “App Store” - A judge has just rejected Apple’s claim for a preliminary injunction to stop Amazon from using the term App Store This comes out of the case where Apple suited Amazon for trademark infringement saying that Amazon improperly used Apple’s “App Store” name. Amazon argued that the term is generic and therefore not protectable. U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton did not agree that the term is purely generic, however ruled that Apple: “Has not established “a likelihood of confusion” with ... read more ...
Wed 6th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Law Professors: PROTECT IP Will “Make it Difficult For Online Advertisers To Do Business on a Web - According to several stories out today a group law professors has come strongly out against the PROTECT IP bill, saying that the pending Senate bill “could make it difficult for online advertisers and credit card companies to continue doing business on the Web” The Protect IP Act provides for court orders forcing Google, Bing and other search engines to stop returning certain results. In addition, the proposed law would require credit-card companies and advertisers to stop doing business ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
French Company Wants to Cancel Adwords Trademark, Hit with UDRP - French company files to cancel one of Google’s trademarks, gets hit with UDRP over .mobi domain name. Google has filed a UDRP against the owner of a French trademark for “adwords” over his domain name ad-words.mobi. The domain owner, Francotel, LLC, has a French trademark for “adwords”, but Google has some as well. Francotel has also filed for cancellation of Google’s European Union trademark for “Adwords”, although it appears the company has filed ... read more ...
Tue 5th July 2011
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Lead Gen Company Reply! Sued for Trademark Infringement - Air conditioning company sues over Adwords search terms and logo use. Online lead generation company Reply! Inc has been sued by air conditioning company Carrier for alleged trademark infringement (pdf). Reply generates and sells leads to various businesses, including air conditioning contractors. It buys ads on Google and other search engines, including for the term “Carrier”: When users click on the Adwords ad, they land at a page with the Carrier logo offering ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
More TLD Trademarks: .Law, .Kom, .Tom, .Construction, .Hub - The “ticking time bomb” in new TLDs continues with no work from ICANN. New top level domain name trademark “frontrunning” continues as 9 more trademarks have been filed related to new TLDs. USM CHINA/HONG KONG LTD filed applications for .Hub, .Tom, Kom, and .Kom. The Kom trademark applications are troubling given VeriSign’s plans to apply for transliterations of .com. And .Tom? Sounds a lot like .com. Thomas A Brackey of Beverly Hills filed three separate ... read more ...
Mon 4th July 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
ICE Now Seeking To Extradite Foreign Operators Of .Com & .Net Sites Which Violate US Law To Face Trial In US - “British website owners (for example) could face extradition to the US on piracy charges even if their operation has no connection to America and does something which is most probably legal in the UK.” “By definition, almost all copyright infringement and trademark violation is transnational. There’s very little purely domestic intellectual property theft” “The jurisdiction we have over these sites right now really is the use of the domain name registry system in the United States.” That’s ... read more ...
Fri 1st July 2011
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DirecTV Wins First Ever .So Domain Arbitration - DirecTV wins Directv.so. .So what? DirecTV has won what may be the first ever .so domain name arbitration case. The case over DirecTV.so was filed with World Intellectual Property Forum by Fairwinds Partners, the group behind Coalition for Domain Name Abuse. I’m not sure winning this domain name was worth the filing fee. .So “commercialized” itself earlier this year to little fanfare. TheDomains reported that traditionally great keyword domains like books.so ... read more ...
Thu 30th June 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Finally a Good UDRP Finds Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Australian company uses UDRP in bad faith. I’m kind of upset lately over panels not finding reverse domain name hijacking, so let me applaud the three person panel in a case over Futuris.com. The panel found Australia-based Futuris Automotive Interiors guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. Even more shocking: Andrew Christie was a member of the panel. Futuris Automotive Interiors certainly has trademarks for Futuris, but for the automotive industry. The issue ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lazy Panelist Alert: This Should Have Been Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - WIPO panelist doesn’t bother to consider a sure-fire reverse domain name hijacking claim. I realize UDRP panelists aren’t paid much to handle cases, but there must be a minimum standard here. Why the frustration? Take a look at the recently decided case for Cite.com. The owner of the domain name registered it in 1997 and started a business called Cité Consulting. The complainant Systemware, Inc. didn’t start using the term “CITE” in commerce until 2011. ... read more ...