Tag Archives: legal

Thu 12th March 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Is The Trademark Clearinghouse Causing New gTLD's To Lose 6X The Number Of Registrations? - Phil Corwin of the Internet Commerce Association (ICA), just published a very interesting story on how the trademark clearinghouse (TMCH) program maybe negatively effecting the numbers of new gTLD’s registrations to a factor of 6X. Its a great read and I think Phil maybe on to something. As an unintended consequence of trying to protection legitimate trademark holders, there is a lot of game-playing at the TMCH where words like “the” “great”, “cool” “luxury” and hundreds of more ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wall Street Journal covers domain name theft - Article shines light on growing problem for businesses. Domain name theft is getting mainstream exposure today thanks to a Wall Street Journal article. The article focuses on the recent theft of ShadesDaddy.com, but also discusses other companies that have fallen victim to domain name theft. It also quotes the ICA’s Phil Corwin and attorneys Enrico Schaefer of Traverse Legal and David Weslow of Wiley Rein. It also refers to domainers, but describes them in a much better light than the typical article ... read more ...
Tue 10th March 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Owner of TechGuruit.com sues Owner of TechGuru.com For Trademark Infringement on Tech Guru - A. Preliminarily and permanently enjoining and restraining the Defendants and Defendants’ directors, officers, agents, servants, employees, subsidiaries, affiliates, and all persons in active concert or participation with, through, or under Defendants: From using in any way the trademarks TECHGURU or TECH GURU, or any other marks, words or names confusingly similar to Plaintiff’s mark, as the name or mark for any of Defendants’ services; From committing any acts of unfair competition and from ... read more ...
Wed 4th March 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Miami cook alleges web engineer is holding domain name hostage - Personal chef claims he can’t get his domain name back and former web marketing firm is sabotaging his new website. Chef Stuart Shaw switched his domain name to TheMiamiPersonalChef.com (pictured) and claims his former web firm is holding his old domain hostage.A Miami personal chef has sued the owner of a web design/marketing company, alleging (pdf) that the company held his domain name hostage after he canceled services. Stuart Shaw says he contracted with Need Marketing Group in 2007 to develop ... read more ...
Mon 2nd March 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2 panelists contend RDNH, other says domain name should be transferred - How did one panelist think a domain should be transferred when the other two say the case was brought in bad faith? It’s fairly rare that a panelist files a dissenting opinion in a UDRP. Usually a three person panel comes to the same conclusion, although occasionally you’ll see a dissent. But a recent decision treads even further into “rare” territory: 2 panelists thought the case was so egregious, it qualified at Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. A third panelist actually found in favor of ... read more ...
Thu 26th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Frank Schilling defends DBAT.com in UDRP - Owner of .net domain name filed cybersquatting complaint. Nothin’ but .net!Baseball equipment company DBAT has lost a UDRP it filed against Frank Schilling for the domain name DBAT.com. The baseball company uses the DBAT.NET domain name. According to the decision (embedded below), DBAT originally threatened Shilling with a UDRP in 2009. It then tried to acquire the domain name through an attorney in 2012. While the details of the 2012 discussions are in dispute, it’s clear that the company tried ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wow, how was this box not retreat domain name hijacking? - WIPO panelist drops the ball in RDNH decision. A single member World Intellectual Property Organization panel has denied a UDRP complaint against the domain name alessandro.com, but failed to find the complainant guilty of reverse domain name hijacking. Frankly, I’m stunned that panelist Pablo A. Palazzi did not find beauty products company Alessandro International GmbH to have brought the case in bad faith, and his rationale contradicts the facts of the case. Alessandro International GmbH filed ... read more ...
Tue 24th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Oh my, Verisign is indeed frightened of new tip turn domains! - Company sues .XYZ and claims its marketing is hurting .com. If you listen to any of Verisign’s quarterly investor calls, you’ll often hear analysts asking what new TLDs are doing to .com. Well, new TLDs are creating confusion, the company says. That confusion isn’t really hurting .com. Maybe .net gets caught up in the confusion, but that’s about it. Actions speak louder than words, though, and Kevin Murphy wrote about proof today that Verisign must actually be a bit concerned about .com in ... read more ...
Fri 20th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Guy takes third gash during MySchool.com with lawsuit - Owner of MySchool411.com really wants MySchool.com, preferably without paying for it. If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. That’s apparently Joseph Carpenter’s belief. Carpenter runs the site MySchool411.com. He filed a UDRP against MySchool.com in 2010 and lost. He filed another one last year and lost again. Now he has filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against the domain name in a third attempt to get the domain name without buying it. The lawsuit uses the Uniregistry whois privacy on ... read more ...
Wed 18th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Top domain apparently regulating spam to get to a Top - New TLD registry sends spam to people who have registered other new TLDs. [Update: See statement from the .Top registry below.] How do you get attention for your new top level domain name in a crowded field? One new top level domain name company has apparently resorted to sending lots of unsolicited email — and likely scraping Whois to do it. .Top is currently ranked #9 in terms of registrations, surely helped by a 99 cent price tag at some registrars. The company behind it, Jiangsu Bangning Science ... read more ...
Wed 11th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Email domain name owners YoYo sues 3 Banks over UDRP - YoYo.email asks UK court to reverse UDRP decision. YoYo.email has sued RBS Bank (Royal Bank of Scotland), Natwest Bank and Coutts Co in the United Kingdom in an effort to overturn an adverse UDRP decision. YoYo registered about 4,000 .email domain names when they came out, almost all of them reflecting brand names. The company plans to use the domain names for a certified email service. But the registration of these brand names has drawn the ire of trademark holders, and YoYo has the distinction ... read more ...
Tue 10th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain registrars should supplement confidence check for transfers to eName - Registrar has become a haven for stolen domain names. Over the weekend I received an email from the (former) owner of ShadesDaddy.com, an online sunglasses seller. He said his domain name had been stolen. I didn’t have to read on to make a prediction: the domain name was transferred to domain name registrar eName. Indeed, it was. How did I make this prediction? Well, a couple months ago someone in Austin was connected to me after their domain name was stolen. It was stolen from their eNom account ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Cremation.com Sues Cremations.com, Sold By FMA For TM Infringement & Seeks Transfer of Domain - In a pretty unusual case, Directors Advantage, Inc., of Clinton NC, owner of the domain name Cremation.com filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against Cremations.com, for cybersquatting under the Federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d), “stemming from wide-ranging aggressive, unethical, and unlawful sales practices and bad faith actions of the registrant of CREMATIONS.COM seeking transfer of the Defendant domain name.” In the Complaint the owner of Cremation.com ... read more ...
Fri 6th February 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICA responds to ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé's "Hogging" remarks - ICANN boss made questionable comments in Davos last month. Internet Commerce Association has sent a letter (pdf) to ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé, following remarks Chehadé made at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. In a video interview with Huffington Post, Chehadé said: The reality is, the more there are names, the less people will actually be hogging names in order to charge a lot for them. Because if somebody took your name on dot-x, you can go get another name on dot-y now.” ... read more ...
Thu 29th January 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
LeadPages is a Reverse Domain Name Hijacker - WIPO panel finds that lead generation technology company abused UDRP. A three person World Intellectual Property Organization panel has found the company behind LeadPages.net to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking in a cybersquatting complaint. Avenue 81, Inc., which offers lead generation software and tools at LeadPages.net, filed a cybersquatting complaint against Karl Payne, the owner of LeadPages.com. Payne registered the .com domain name in 2004. LeadPages.net was formed and its domain ... read more ...
Wed 28th January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Good.com Files Federal Lawsuit For Trademark Infringement Against Good.co - Good Technology Corporation and Good Technology Software, Inc. (collectively, “Good”) which operates Good.com, filed a federal lawsuit against Good.Co, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California yesterday for trademark infringement and volition of the ACPA. Here are the highlights: Good was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Since its founding, Good has established itself as a pioneer in mobile technology software and as the leader ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Owner of Good.com sues business that uses Good.co - Company miffed that consumers may be confused by Good.co vs. Good.com. Good vs. GoodGood Technology Corporation, a mobility services company that uses the domain name Good.com, has sued (pdf) a career app and social network company using the name Good.co. I suspect Good Technology Corporation is facing an uphill battle here. It uses a dictionary term with broad usage, and the arguments it makes in its case seem rather weak to me. For example: Defendant should have performed a trademark search before ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Was Michele.watch purebred for Pole Dances or for Watches? - Domain name registrant came up with a creative defense in UDRP. A National Arbitration Forum panel has ordered the domain name Michele.watch transferred to watchmaker Fossil Group, Inc. I’ve got to hand it to the respondent in this case. He put up a spirited defense of his registration of Michele.watch. Kucevic said he didn’t register the domain name to take advantage of Fossil’s Michele brand of watches. Instead, he registered it for use as a pole dancing site. The idea was that visitors ... read more ...
Mon 26th January 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Photo.com – sole for over $1 million twice – saved in UDRP - Complainant makes interesting allegations in UDRP. A three person WIPO panel has handed down a decision in a UDRP for Photo.com in a case I wrote about in October. The complainant owns Foto.com, but there’s a lot more to the story than just a company using UDRP to go after a great domain name. According to complainant Fotocom Société Anonyme: Complainant contends that Respondent is actually controlled or influenced by its former Chief Executive Officer (hereinafter “Panos”). According to ... read more ...
Thu 22nd January 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.XXX registry releases Domain Check for code owners - Tool checks brand across more than just ICM Registry’s top level domain names. ICM Registry, the company behind .xxx and the forthcoming .porn and .adult domain names, has released an online tool for companies to check their brands across hundreds of new top level domain names. Domain Check, of course, provides status information related to ICM’s own top level domain names. But it also checks the domain name across many TLDs, providing launch phase and registration status. For example, here’s ... read more ...
Wed 21st January 2015
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Trademark Holders Make Cybersquatting Profitable By Failing To Act: BentleyMotorCars.com 9 Years Old - We have mentioned before that when it comes to the levels of  cybersquatting trademark holders have to share the blame by creating the ecosystem for high profits for those registering bang on trademark infringing domains and allowing them to be very profitabily parked for many year before taking action Today we see another one such case. Bentley Motors Limited just won a UDRP on BentleyMotorCars.com which is they way they are frequently described.  A Google search for the term returns a ton of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Investment organisation RVK intent in Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on RVK.com - Company changed its brand last year, filed UDRP to get matching three letter domain name. They want the matching domain name, but would rather not pay for it.A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has found investment advisory firm RVK (formerly R.V. Kuhns Associates, Inc.) guilty of engaging in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name RVK.com. The company, aided by law firm Tonkon Torp LLP, filed a UDRP against domain name owner Gregory Ricks. According to the decision, the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The furious story about how a domain name CM.com was only registered - Verisign just allowed the reserved domain name CM.com to be registered. Here’s why. In 2013, the longtime registrant of CM.com lost his domain name. The domain name had been registered to Satoshi Shimoshita since 2004. Yet the domain name was deleted following a period in which the nameservers for the domain name pointed to NS1.SPAMSHUTDOWN.COM. That a registrar forcefully deleted an extremely valuable domain name not coming up for renewal is rather odd. But the story of CM.com has become even ... read more ...
Tue 20th January 2015
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MomAndMe.com spared in UDRP. Should have been RDNH? - Indian company should not have brought case. A single member World Intellectual Property Organization panel has ruled against Mahindra Mahindra Limited of India in its UDRP against the owner of MomAndMe.com. Even though the domain name owner didn’t respond, this case should have been a candidate for reverse domain name hijacking. The complainant claims rights dating as far back as 2007. The domain name owner appears to have registered the domain name in 2000. Case closed. More worrisome is how ... read more ...
Fri 16th January 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
“Legitimate companies don’t censor their hit details” - Is using whois privacy or proxy services a red flag? I was reading a story this morning about problems at Bitcoin payment processor EgoPay. The author noted that the EgoPay.com website is devoid of contact information and that the domain name is protected by whois privacy. The author concludes that “Legitimate companies don’t hide their contact details.” I agree to an extent. A combination of not disclosing contact details on a site and using whois privacy ... read more ...