Tag Archives: legal

Tue 17th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Peruvian Broadcaster Loses Case for RPP.com - Broadcast company can’t have three letter domain name, panel rules. Peru broadcast company GRUPORPP S.A., which has an online news portal at rpp.com.pe, has lost an arbitration case in which it fought for the domain name RPP.com. According to the panel decision the company managed to get a trademark for RPP.com in Peru back in 2001, which is quite scary given that it didn’t own the domain name. Although the company has been around since 1963, it didn’t say whether ... read more ...
Mon 16th May 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
How About Trademark Squatting? Disney Files Trademarks on “Seal Team 6″ - According to a story in mediabistro.com,  two days after  Seal Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden, Disney applied for a trademark on the term “Seal Team 6″in several classes to cover clothing, toys, games, video games, entertainment and education services. Of course if a domainer registers a domain after an event they are called cybersqautters and worse. In the US trademarks are suppose to be registered AFTER use not based on planned or future use. So unless Disney already had project(s) for Seal ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Oversee.net and ICA Blast ICANN on Domain Parking Mention in New TLD Guidebook - Equating domain parking with “social costs” should be struck from guidebook, organizations say. Both Oversee.net and Internet Commerce Association have sent strongly worded comments to ICANN regarding a new provision inserted in the latest new top level domain guidebook. As I wrote about in April, the latest guidebook asks applicants to answer: What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs (e.g., time or financial resource costs, as ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Mrs Jello Gets a Win for Geo Domain Owners - Domainer wins case over geographic domain name brought by petroleum company. What do you do when the name of a place has also been incorporated into a business name? This was the issue in a recent UDRP case involving a Brazilian petroleum company and the domainer commonly known as “Mrs Jello”. Ipiranga Produtos de Petróleo S.A. filed the case in an effort to get the domain name ipiranga.com. Ipiranga happens to be the name of a famous river in Brazil as well ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Unlike Its Competitors, Absolute Poker Doesn’t Get Its Domain Name Back - Online poker site strikes deal with government but doesn’t get access to domain name. Last week the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced a deal with Absolute Poker to help U.S. players get their money back. But the deal differed from the one struck with Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars last month in one critical way — Absolute Poker isn’t getting back control of its domain name. The deal with Absolute Poker’s ... read more ...
Fri 13th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Olympics and Red Cross Push for Special Rights with New TLDs - GAC backs move by groups to get names added to reserved names lists for new TLDs. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) continues to pester ICANN about giving it special privileges for new top level domain names, and now the American Red Cross is adding its name to the hat as well. IOC’s outside counsel for intellectual property met with ICANN representatives during the ICANN meeting in San Francisco earlier this year, a letter just published on ICANN’s web ... read more ...
Thu 12th May 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Government Domain Seizures Are Out of Protect IP Bill, But Search Engines, ISP’s & Payment Processors Are On The Clock - The PROTECT IP 2011 bill is out in draft form, which is this year version of last year’s Leahy Bill entitled Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) This proposed bill is different than the COICA in that it no longer includes the ability to go to domain registries and registrars and require them to remove domains or hand them over to the government but replaces it with a private cause of action remedy against website holders who violate copyright laws (of course the government ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Job Boards Launch Another Attack on .Jobs Registry - Monster, CareerBuilder, and others write open letter to ICANN. The .Jobs Charter Compliance Coalition, whose membership consists of online job boards, has sent an “open letter” to ICANN regarding Employ Media’s request for arbitration over .jobs. The Coalition says that its letter is to “address the Request’s numerous inconsistencies, omissions and mischaracterizations” in Employ Media’s request for arbitration. The letter states: The Coalition believes ... read more ...
Wed 11th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
HootSuite Adds .Li Shorteners But Defends Use of .Ly - Service adds back up URLs but says people need not worry about .ly. That’s wrong. Social networking platform HootSuite has added alternatives to shorteners that use Libya’s country code domain name .ly after users expressed concerns about relying on the Libyan .ly domain name. In addition to Ow.ly and Ht.ly, users can now use Owl.li and Htl.li. .Li is the country code domain name for Liechtenstein. At the same time the company defended the stability of .ly, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Prominent UDRP Defense Attorneys Also Opposed to UDRP Reform - If it ain’t completely broke, don’t risk breaking it. Yesterday I wrote about how World Intellectual Property Forum and National Arbitration Forum are opposed to initiating a UDRP reform effort at WIPO. They aren’t the only ones in this camp. Prominent UDRP defense attorneys John Berryhill and Ari Goldberger also spoke on yesterday’s “State of the UDRP” webinar. And both of them are opposed to an overhaul of UDRP. This is an interesting dynamic. The ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Monopoly Case Fizzles, No Break for Domainers - CFIT settles with VeriSign for $0. Hopes by domainers that .com prices would fall thanks to an antitrust lawsuit have officially been dashed. VeriSign just released a press release stating that Coalition for ICANN Transparency has agreed to drop a case against it. The lawsuit attacked both VeriSign’s no-bid contract with ICANN that allowed it to raise prices 7% a year as well as its planned domain waitlisting service. Although ultimately CFIT lost, I suspect their ... read more ...
Tue 10th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Above.com In Settlement Talks with Verizon - Domain company working toward settlement over trademark lawsuit. Above.com is currently in settlement talks with Verizon over a lawsuit brought by Verizon in February, according to court records. Verizon filed the suit against Above.com, parent company Trellian, and some of its key employees back in February. It also served the company during DOMAINfest. The complaint alleges that the defendants use a number of false identities to traffic in trademark-infringing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Incumbents Opposed to UDRP Reform - Two largest UDRP providers opposed to UDRP reform. The two largest UDRP providers — National Arbitration Forum (NAF) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) — are opposed to reforming the UDRP at this time. Representatives of NAF and WIPO made statements this morning on an ICANN conference call regarding “The State of the UDRP”. WIPO also released a written statement that you can view here. It seems that intellectual property interests are concerned ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cleveland Browns Win Browns.com Domain Name - NFL team gets rights to Browns.com domain name. The Cleveland Browns football team just scored a big win off the field. A World Intellectual Property Forum panel awarded the team the domain name Browns.com in arbitration. According to the football franchise, the owner of the domain name used the page as a parked domain name with pay-per-click links to football topics. When the team reached out to the owner of the domain name, the name of the owner in the whois database ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Urgent: Now Intellectual Property Group Wants to Apply New Rights Protections to .Net - Make your voice heard now. (After reading this article I recommend reading more details about what this means.) Earlier this week I wrote about how a draft version of the business constituency’s comments about VeriSign’s renewal of the .net contract requested that uniform rapid suspension be added to .net. Thankfully the business constituency didn’t include that provision in its final comments. But the Intellectual Property Constituency did: Once the post-launch ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Confusion About Domain Seizures Spreads After IP Constituency Comments - Commenters confused about domain seizures under URS. The number of comments submitted to ICANN about its proposed renewal agreement with VeriSign to run .net has exploded over the past hour. The source of the comments appears to be a misunderstanding over what the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) proposed in its comments. As I wrote earlier, IPC wants Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) to apply to new top level domain names. I believe the confusion started at ... read more ...
Mon 9th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Watch Out Chevy Volt Fan Sites – GM is on a Prowl - GM wins rights to web site about Chevy Volt. Last year I wrote about GM-Volt.com, a site that was getting over 75,000 visits a month. I warned that using trademarks in your domain name — even as a fan site — is treacherous ground. Indeed, GM just won a case brought before the World Intellectual Property Forum for the domain name ChevyVolt.org. GM said that the site looked like a fan site on the surface, but as you dug deeper it clearly was not: …the website ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A Domain Name Post That Will Have You ROFLMA - Some sophisticated domain name humor. Sometimes it’s tough being a blogger. The articles I spend the most time writing often get the least amount of traffic. So I want to urge you to read a post over at Domain Incite that not only took a while to research and write, but is as close as you can get to sophisticated Jon Stewart humor for the domain policy crowd. The 10 dumbest moments from that new TLDs Congressional hearing pokes fun at the politicians (and to a ... read more ...
Sun 8th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Urgent: Factions Want to Impose Uniform Rapid Suspension on .Net - Business Constituency may propose new regulations for .net. The comment period for the proposed renewal of the .net registry agreement ends on May 10, yet no one has commented to date. But there will be comments by time the comment period closes, and one could be a bombshell: a proposal to apply the untested Uniform Rapid Suspension scheme to .net. Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) is a trademark rights protection mechanism that is likely to apply to new top level domain ... read more ...
Fri 6th May 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
You Think Discount Liquor Is Too Generic To Get Trademark Protection? Tell That To The 3 Stores That Had To Change Names - While we typically spend our time chatting about online trademark issues, I couldn’t help but notice a case involving brick and mortar liquor stores which were made to change their name based off a state trademark on the term “Discount Liquor” Make that three liquor stores that were made to change there name because one company has a trademark on the term “Discount Liquor”. The owner of Wisconsin’s “Discount Liquor” filed a lawsuit against Vliet Discount Liquor, claiming that the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
EuroDNS and ICANN Trade Jabs - Popular European domain registrar and ICANN continue to spar over Facebok.com. Following a notice of breach sent by ICANN to EuroDNS, the two companies have traded jabs in correspondence. On April 25 EuroDNS CEO Xavier Buck sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN explaining why it had not transferred the domain name Facebok.com, which was lost in a UDRP case. Buck expressed disappointment that ICANN sent the breach notice that publicly “put under question” EuroDNS’ reputation. ... read more ...
Thu 5th May 2011
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Eva Longoria Adds .Org To Her Collection - Actress wins UDRP for EvaLongoria.org domain name. Actress Eva Longoria of Desperate Housewives fame has added the domain name EvaLongoria.org to her collection of domain names. Longoria won the domain name through an arbitration case with National Arbitration Forum. The domain name was registered to a Las Vegas company that forwarded the domain to an eBay search for the actress. The actress already owns EvaLongoria.com and EvaLongoria.net. All three domain names ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
National Motor Club Hits Jackpot, Wins 3 Letter Domain in UDRP - Group wins 3 letter domain name when owner doesn’t respond. National Motor Club of America, Inc. is the proud new owner of the three letter domain name NMC.com, which it won in a UDRP decision handed down by National Arbitration Forum. The owner of the domain name has used whois privacy at Network Solutions for many years. They didn’t respond the the complaint, and my guess is they didn’t even receive it. Typically a panel will consider handing over a three ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Kevin Ham Wins Another, and You Won’t Believe What a Complainant Argued - Complainant tells panel how it generated PPC results of its competitors. Kevin Ham’s Vertical Axis has successfully defended BrightSign.com in a UDRP with the help of Ari Goldberger of ESQwire. Vertical Axis won for a number of reasons, including that the domain name was registered well before the complainant started using the term “Bright Sign” in commerce. Of course, it’s also a generic domain name. But the funny part is the ridiculous assertion BrightSign ... read more ...
Wed 4th May 2011
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
From House Hearing; ICANN: Domainers Are Against New gTLD’s Because They Will Lose The Value Of There Beachfront Property - The House subcommittee on the new gTLD’s just ended in Washington and it was as bloody as expected. Of course the representative from ICANN, Kurt Pritz its Senior Vice President, didn’t help himself or ICANN but making inaccurate statements, failing to explain the new gTLD process properly or putting the new gTLD process in a positive light. IP trademark interests dominated the hearing not only though the witnesses that were called but in statements made by the Representatives which appearently ... read more ...