Tag Archives: legal

Mon 5th October 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
UDRP: Your’e Going To Lose A “…Sucks” Domain If You Park It. - In a new ruling today on the domain radioshacksucks.com made it pretty clear if you own one of these company “sucks” domains if you park it you will lose it. While such domains have been found to be fair use when there is a site with content related to fair critizim of the company, this WIPO ruling clearly states that parking such a domain will be fatal to continued ownership. “””The Panel notes that  Simply having a domain name with “-sucks” in the name cannot, by itself, establish ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Latest Top Level Domain Guidebook Allows .Com Prices to Skyrocket - New draft guidebook doesn’t adequately address concerns that VeriSign could hike .com registration prices. Over the weekend, ICANN released its latest New gTLD Applicant Guidebook with guidelines for the introduction of new top level domain names such as .eco and .shop. Unfortunately, the guidebook still holds a time bomb for owners of existing domain names, such as .com domains, that could force them to pay massive renewal fees for their domains. What the guidebook ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Top Level Domains Still Two Years Away from Reality - Latest ICANN guidance and remaining challenges means new TLDs are a long way away. The introduction of new top level domain names, such as .green and .food, looks to be at least a couple years away from reality. ICANN’s latest draft guidebook for entities wishing to apply for a new top level domain name states that the application process is likely to start in the “first half of 2010″. Previously, the goal was the first quarter of 2010, but even that was the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
No Wildcarding for New Top Level Domain Names - ICANN says ‘no’ to wildcards. Registries that are awarded new top level domain names will be prohibited from wildcarding unregistered domains, based on the latest version of ICANN’s applicant guidebook. The new registration agreement reads: For domain names which are either not registered by a registrant, or the registrant has not supplied valid records such as NS records for listing in the DNS zone file, or their status does not allow them to be published in ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cybersquatters Not Allowed to Apply for New gTLDs - Cybersquatters not allowed to apply for new TLDs. Does that include domain registrars? The latest version of ICANN’s guidebook for new top level domain name applicants includes language to prohibit cybersquatters from applying for new top level domain names. This could have interesting implications if people get technical about it. First, here’s who is not allowed to apply: b. Applicant, or any partner, officer, director, or manager, or any person or entity ... read more ...
Fri 2nd October 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
15%-25% of Domain Names are Registered with Masked Whois - Study examines use of privacy and proxy services. A new report (pdf) released by ICANN yesterday says that 15%-25% of all registered domain names use some sort of service to mask whois information. The study found that the majority of people masking whois use a proxy service, which means an entity actually registers the domain on the domain “owner’s” behalf, and then leases it to that owner. Only 15% use privacy services, which mask some of the whois information ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Will IDN Top Level Domains Kill Existing IDN Domain Names? - You’re right, there is no written guarantee from ICANN on any of this; nor will you see any, and there’s a good reason why this is, and that’s because it’s not their problem or concern. The only stipulation ICANN have set is that surfers must not get confused, hence where the much used ICANN phrase “not confusingly similar” has come from. For example, there is no way on earth a new cctld .teevee would be allowed, because it sounds like an existing extension (.tv) I am an ... read more ...
Thu 1st October 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Napoleon Hill Foundation Doesn’t Own “And Grow Rich” - Arbitrator rules against foundation on all three counts in UDRP. The Napolean Hill Foundation has gotten rich off its namesake’s timeless “Think and Grow Rich” book. But an arbitrator with National Arbitration Forum has ruled that it doesn’t have a lock on the term “and grow rich”. The foundation filed a claim against the owner of FlipandGrowRich.com, a web site that offers information about flipping real estate, including a book titled “Flip and Grow ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Arbitrator Rains on Media Rain’s Parade - Utah company loses its frivolous UDRP complaint. No surprise here. But still a sad, abusive story to report. Media Rain, LLC has lost its arbitration proceedings in which it tried to obtain the domain name Rain.com. The facts were quite damning. Rain.com was registered back in 1990, 18 years prior to Media Rain’s formation. Verio acquired the ISP that owned Rain.com in 1996. But Media Rain, which uses the domain name MediaRain.com, wanted to get its hands ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hot off Press: Domain Owner Responds to Glenn Beck - Response filed in Glenn Beck domain dispute. Most UDRP domain dispute proceedings make for dry reading. But when someone who has created a bitingly satirical web site works with his lawyer to put pen to the paper, the end result can be quite amusing. Such is the case in Glenn Beck’s fight for the domain name glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. If you haven’t read about this case yet, the domain owner created the web site because of an internet meme ... read more ...
Wed 30th September 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Interview: Rod Beckstrom on Affirmation of Commitments - Domain Name Wire interviews ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom. We have a new acronym to add to the domain name lexicon: AOC, for Affirmation of Commitments. Earlier today the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) formally announced its new agreement to replace the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with the U.S. Government. On the surface, the AOC (pdf) sounds like a wish list of everything a domain owner could want: explanations from ICANN about how it makes ... read more ...
Tue 29th September 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Reporters Without Borders: Keep a ICANN Status Quo - Press freedom advocate opposed to ICANN governance changes. Reporters Without Borders, an organization that pushes for freedom of the press, is urging the U.S. government to keep the status quo of internet governance. In an article on its web site, it suggests not handing any control of ICANN over to other governments. No one underestimates the risks of maintaining an Internet governance system controlled by a single entity,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN To Announce New Governance Structure on Wednesday - ICANN’s future to become clearer on Wednesday. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will make an announcement tomorrow regarding the expiration of its Joint Project Agreement with the U.S. Government, Domain Name Wire has learned. Although details are not available at this time, sources tell Domain Name Wire that The Economist‘s article regarding an “Affirmation of Commitments” is a fair representation of the new arrangement, barring ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Is Paris a Model for New Internet Governance? Let’s Hope Not. - Paris wants your domain name if it has Paris in it. As the U.S. cedes more control of ICANN to foreign governments, many people are worried about what happens when censoring countries like China get a role in internet policy oversight. Few people would ever think that countries like France would be a threat. But it appears that way, at least if the thinking of leaders in its capital are any indication. Earlier today Domain Name Wire wrote about three domain disputes ... read more ...
Mon 28th September 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Wants to Trap WHOIS Abusers for Study - Group sends our RFP for whois abuse study. ICANN, through Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), is seeking proposals from qualified companies to study whois abuse. One of its proposed mechanisms for studying abuse is to set up a number of test domain names to see what happens to the whois data created for them. A similar study (pdf) was conducted in 2007, but only to research whois harvesting for spam. In the new study, GNSO will also check for postal/phone ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Not-So-Uniform Domain Dispute Resolution Policy - Inconsistency in UDRP decisions. Officially, UDRP stands for Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy. But sometimes it seems it should be called various-form, or not-uniform. How arbitrators decide cases can be a crap shoot. Here’s a recent example: ChinaDiesel.com. The complainant lost the case. But what’s interesting is how the arbitrator approached the first requirement of UDRP: “the domain name registered by Respondent is identical or confusingly ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cheech & Chong Try to Smoke Out Domain Name - Comedians file for arbitration to get domain name. Comedy duo Richard “Cheech” Marin and Tommy Chong are reuniting — to go after the domain name CheechandChong.com. After a long separation, the pair have been making numerous appearances and a tour together. So it naturally follows that they’d want to grab the domain name. A complaint was filed World Intellectual Property Organization and should be resolved within a couple months. The domain name is currently ... read more ...
Sat 26th September 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Why Do Lawyers Spend Thousands a Month Renting Billboards & Don’t Spend A Dime For A Good Domain - In a recent 4 week period, I was up and down the I-4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando, several times a week. I noticed as a “industry” no one group advertises on billboards more than lawyers. More than 1/2 of the billboards I saw didn’t even have a domain name on the billboard. The billboards almost all had phone numbers, 99% of which I still can’t remember even having seen the boards several times a day. The billboards which did have a URL with rare exception used a domain name containing ... read more ...
Fri 25th September 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Porsche Loses UDRP On Porscheexperience.com & Porscheguides.com Even After The Owner Offers To Sell Them - It’s becoming very  frustrating for domainers to know what the status of the law is regarding UDRP’s,  as decisions are all over the place an seem to have little consistency. In a decision released today, Porsche the car maker,  filed a UDRP on the domains porscheexperience.com and porscheguides.com. The owner of the domain according to the facts,  offered to sell the domains to Porsche for 5,000 euro’s. or around $7,500 at today’s exchange rates. Despite offering to sell the domains ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Real Truth About New Top Level Domains - Here’s what is really happening with new TLDs. I’ve written before about why I’m opposed to how ICANN is releasing new top level domain names, even though I stand to benefit financially from the release. But over the past couple months we’ve heard plenty of spin from everyone involved in the process. So I want to clear a few things up. I’m going to tell you what everyone is thinking, but may not want to come out and publicly say. New TLDs will be introduced ... read more ...
Thu 24th September 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Economist: ICANN Will Be Set Free This Month - According to The Economist, deal between ICANN and U.S. government is imminent. The Economist is reporting that ICANN will likely be mostly set free this month, signing a four page “affirmation of commitments” with the U.S. government. The Joint Project Agreement, which currently governs some of the government’s relationship with ICANN, is due to expire at the end of this month. The new “affirmation of commitments” is due to go into effect the day before ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cricket Wireless Gets a Domain Name Upgrade - Pre-paid wireless company gets a better domain name. Cricket Communications has a domain name problem, but it just fixed some of it. The pre-paid wireless company is growing quickly. But finding it on the web isn’t so simple. If you go to Cricket.com, you’ll find the recently sold domain name that pertains to the sport of cricket. (The previous owner of Cricket.com — Live Current Media — used to park it with ads for cell phones. It was the company’s ... read more ...
Wed 23rd September 2009
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom Responds to Congress - ICANN responds to Congress. ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom has responded to Lamar Smith and Howard Coble’s letter and questions. A copy of Beckstrom’s response is available here. Here are some highlights: Implementation Recommendation Team proposals: “The Board has not yet formally considered the proposals from the IRT… “After this extensive consultation, ICANN is recommending the implementation of versions of the IRT’s recommendations, such as a post-delegation ... read more ...
Tue 22nd September 2009
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
The Highest Court In The EU Says Its OK For Google To Sell Trademarked Keywords - The European Union highest court, The European Court of Justice, issued an “interim legal opinion” that Google does not infringed on trademark holders rights, by allowing advertisers to buy keywords of registered trademarks. As we told you back in May,  Google announced it would allow advertisers to buy the trademark keywords of its competitors. Also In May, Google announced that not only could competitors buy ads under trademarked keywords, but that they could even use the trademark, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Testimony of Domain Name Hearings on Capitol Hill - A preview with links to testimony for Wednesday’s hearing. Wednesday morning, the House Committee on the Judiciary will hold a hearing on the expansion of top level domain names. Four witnesses will testify: Doug Brent, Chief Operating Officer of ICANN, Richard Heath President of International Trademark Association, Paul Stahura, Chief Executive Officer/President eNOM, Inc., and Steve DelBianco, Executive Director of NetChoice. Here’s a preview of their testimony: Doug ... read more ...