Facebook Finally Sues Owner Of FaceBookofSex.com But Still Not XXXBook.com or XXXMatch.com - According to XBiz.com, Facebook filed suit against FriendFinder and its subsidiaries over it’s site FacebookOfSex.com, claiming it’s too similar to its own trademarked name. “In the suit filed Wednesday at U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Facebook says FacebookOfSex.com ” is a blatant attempt … to hijack Facebook’s fame for illicit financial gain.” “But FriendFinder, according to the suit, claims that it has problems with Facebook’s use of the term “friend finder,” ... read more ...

PornWikiLeaks.com Exposes Volumes Of Personal Data On Thousands Of Adult Performers & The Free Speech Coalition Fights Back - According to Xbiz.com, “The Free Speech Coalition says it is looking into legal options available for performers affected by the PornWikileaks.com site, which has exposed volumes of personal data information on thousands of performers.” “Free Speech Coalition stands in opposition to the violations of performer privacy by PornWikileaks,” FSC Executive Director Diane Duke said Friday. “This is not an issue of free speech; it is about violating the privacy of performers. It’s about potential ... read more ...

Business Insider: Meet The Boy Genius Who Just Took Down The Online Poker Industry - BusinessInsider.com just published a article entitled “Meet The Boy Genius Who Just Took Down The Online Poker Industry” citing a story published by Australia’s Courier-Mail newspaper. The article tells the story about an Australian,  Daniel Tzvetkoff   “who set up the payment processing schemes used by the biggest poker sites to handle their (mostly illegal) transactions”. According to the story Mr. Tzvetkoff was arrested last year in Las Vegas and “charged with the same crimes those ... read more ...

Why Is Anyone Surprised Over Yesterday’s Gambling Domain Seizures & Why No Publicly Traded Company Got Charged - Just days after Washington DC announced it was legalizing online gaming including online poker, the US Government charged the operators of the largest online poker sites PokerStars, FullTiltPoker, AbsolutePoker (using UB.com)  all offshore companies, on charges of, violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, operation of illegal gambling business, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. The Feds seized 5 domain names, and  are seeking recovery ... read more ...

Domain Owners Should Not Worry About Poker Domain Seizures - Poker domain seizures involved complex criminal activity specifically targeted at the United States. Yesterday the online gambling world was rocked by the seizure of five poker domain names used by three large online poker companies. The domain names were seized by the FBI from PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker. According to Compete.com, FullTiltPoker.com gets around 1 million unique visitors a month. Some people are drawing references to the Kentucky ... read more ...

Poker Domain Seizures Show Futility of Nabbing Domain Names - Even without .com domains, sites can continue to operate. You can take away a domain name, but you can’t stop people from visiting a web site. Yesterday’s seizure of five poker company domain names is another case in point. Still want to get your fix of Poker Stars? Just go to PokerStars.eu. It reminds me of when online gambling site Bodog ran into legal problems. The solution? Change the URL from Bodog.com to NewBodog.com. Sure, it lost some players as a ... read more ...

Just Released New TLD Guidebook Attacks Domain Parking - Applicants for new TLDs must answer question related to domain name parking. Out of nowhere, domain parking appears to be under attack in the new top level domain name application process. The latest guidebook, released yesterday, includes a section for applicants to explain: What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs (e.g., time or financial resource costs, as well as various types of consumer vulnerabilities)? What other steps will ... read more ...

eNom and Go Daddy Still Disqualified from Applying for New Top Level Domains - Language of new applicant guidebook disqualifies two large domain name registrars. If you read the spirit of the rules related to new top level domain names, domain name registrars eNom and Go Daddy are still disqualified from applying for their own top level domain names. In the latest draft ICANN tweaked the language regarding applicants for new TLDs who have been found guilty of cybersquatting, but not enough to let these two companies off the hook. The guidebook ... read more ...

Facebook Files Trademark Lawsuit Against FriendFinder - Facebook files trademark lawsuit against owner of FriendFinder. Facebook, Inc. has filed a lawsuit against Various, Inc., parent company of FriendFinder, along with a couple related companies and John Does. The case was filed in U.S. District Court, Northern District of Califonia on Wednesday. The entire complaint hasn’t been posted online, but it involves Various, Inc’s trademarks for FriendFinder and AdultFriendFinder. I know that Facebook has called its ... read more ...

Sears Files Suit Over DieHardSpray.com - “The point of a trademark is that the owner can oversee/dictate it’s use in commerce.” Although Trademarks are/can be very complicated to understand I’d say they that they can’t “dictate it’s use” in commerce unless they state its use when appying for a TM. More than one person can hold a Trade Mark on the same term if it has been granted for different uses in commerce. If its being used for something else other than what it says in the TM then whats the problem ? Below is ... read more ...

Czech Arbitration Court Issues Reverse Domain Name Hijacking Decision - UDRP provider blasts complainant and issues finding of RDNH. One of the smaller and lesser known UDRP providers has issued a finding of reverse domain name hijacking against a complainant. Czech Arbitration Court, known for its attempts to create a “quick” UDRP procedure, found that complainant Streetwave Pte Ltd brought its case against StreetWave.com in bad faith. Streetwave Pte Ltd has just filed for trademarks in a number of countries, but the domain owner ... read more ...

Sorry Beckstrom, You Should Have Voted on .XXX - ICANN CEO’s abstention from .xxx vote is weak. During ICANN’s meeting in San Francisco last month a number of board members gave their rationale for or against .xxx. Some members abstained and stated their reason. So it was a little odd when ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom didn’t vote. He whispered something away from the microphone to chair Peter Dengate Thrush about publishing his reason for not voting, but it was barely audible. His rationale has now been published, ... read more ...

Oversee.net Trademark Attempt Rejected - Oversee.net trademark for travel web site denied. Oversee.net has failed to get a trademark for its LowFares.com brand. LowFares.com is a travel comparison site and part of the company’s network of vertical web sites. A key issue for Oversee.net was that another company already has a trademark for LowestFare.com. Oversee.net tried to argue that the services it offers on LowFares.com are distinct from those on LowestFare.com. LowFares.com compares travel prices ... read more ...

EFF: Certificate Authorities Signing Non Existent Top Level Domain Names - EFF says digital certificate signers aren’t doing their job. SSL certificate providers gain trust by validating the domain names they are signing. So you might be surprised that they’re signing certificates for domain names that can’t even exist. Electronic Frontier Foundation dug up over a thousand certificates for domain names attached to non existent top level domain names. Many of these were probably entered in error, but consider “TLDs” such as .trust, ... read more ...

TribalWars Loses Fight Against BuyDomains for TribalWars.com - Popular online game will need to pay if it wants .com domain name. MMORPG TribalWars has lost an arbitration case over the domain name TribalWars.com, which is owned by BuyDomains. InnoGames, the company behind the game, filed the dispute at World Intellectual Property Forum in January. The arbitration panel determined that the domain name was not registered in bad faith because it was acquired prior to TribalWars gaining any sort of global rights in the name. In ... read more ...

Time Warner Cybersquatter Uses a “I Could Have Been Worse” Defense - Guys actually tries to defend himself in no-brainer cybersquatting case. Last month I wrote about how Time Warner filed a UDRP to get 41 domain names including its brands and “3D”. It just won the case, which comes as no surprise. But it’s a very entertaining read. The registrant of the domain names must have read stories about cybersquatters striking it big by selling domains to trademark holders. The panelist sums up his defense as: a. Other domain names ... read more ...

5,800 New .Jobs Sites Created for Veterans - Group activates 5,800 second level domains to target jobs to U.S. veterans. DirectEmployers Association and .jobs registry Employ Media need to do something to bolster a “do-good” status, and they may have found something: use .jobs domains for military veterans. They just created 5,800 sites for veterans and their families, including veterans.jobs. There are sites for each Military Occupational Classification (MOC) Crosswalk, e.g. www.42F.jobs, www.25B.jobs, ... read more ...

PLA.com Lawsuit Against Nat Cohen’s Telepathy Dismissed - Project Leadership Associates drops case over PLA.com. In September Project Leadership Associates Inc. sued Nat Cohen’s Telepathy, Inc. in an effort to get the domain name PLA.com. After many months of back and forth, including counterclaims by Telepathy against Project Leadership Associates, the case has been dropped. Cohen released the following statement: Project Leadership Associates and Telepathy Inc. are pleased to announce the dismissal with prejudice of ... read more ...

Company Hit with UDRP for Typo of Its Own Domain Name - ShoeBuy.com registered typo of its own domain name, only to have to defends itself for cybersquatting. Imagine you’re an online shoe retailer. To protect against cybersquatting you register over 100 common typos of your domain name. Then one day someone comes along and says that one of the typos of your domain name infringes on its trademark. That’s what happened in the recently decided UDRP for Shoeby v. Shoebuy.com for the domain ShoeBy.com. Shoeby is a Netherlands ... read more ...