This is a complex lawsuit by trademark owners attacking domaining and the role of the Google AdSense for Domains program in funding domaining activity. When I first blogged on the case in 2007, I wrote: "the lawsuit could effectively fall apart if the judge rejects formation of a class. Trademark class action lawsuits are rare for good reason..." Last week, the court ruled on class certification, and perhaps not surprisingly, the court denied certification -- giving Google and the other defendants an early Christmas gift. more
A trademark owner who notices that someone else has registered a domain name incorporating the owner's mark can file an arbitration action under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP for short). This often serves as a quicker and less expensive alternative to pursuing the cybersquatter in court. To be successful under the UDRP, the "Complainant" has to show all of the following three elements... more
Whenever you register a domain name, your contact details are published in a publicly visible database called "Whois", where your contact details are instantly harvested by spambots and marketers who proceed to email and postal mail you marketing offers, deceptive "domain slamming" attempts, ads for dubious products, and perhaps even telemarketing calls. Nobody likes that, so over the years people started resorting to various tactics to protect themselves from the deluge of crap that inevitably comes with simply registering a domain name... more
The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) recently released a statement that implied that cybersquatting is a criminal activity. It said, "CADNA has been working diligently to further international and national policies that combat the practice of cybersquatting... As brands continue to learn about the prevalence and practice of online criminal activities..." While, Internet Commerce Association (ICA) vigorously opposes cybersquatting, it is important to note that cybersquatting is a civil matter, not a criminal one. There is a good reason that cybersquatting is a civil matter... more
As ICANN introduces new generic top level domains (gTLDs) and separates itself from US oversight, it has the opportunity to distance itself from the taint of cybersquatting, brand abuse, and criminal activity involving domains... To underscore the scope of the issue, consider this research on just 30 top Interbrand-ranked global brands. The most recent MarkMonitor Brandjacking Index found cybersquatting incidents increased over 40% in the last year for the brands that were studied; these leading brands suffered as many as 15,000 incidents per brand... more
Navigation Catalyst Systems (NCS) has settled the well publicized cybersquatting lawsuit brought against it by Verizon. The terms of the settlement are simple and straight forward, amounting to little more than an agreement by NCS to no longer register domains similar to Verizon's trademarks again. No money was apparently paid by NCS as part of the resolution. more
I'm often baffled by lawsuits over domain names and keywords because they just don't seem to make any economic sense. This lawsuit is especially perplexing given the plaintiff's delays and the seeming impossibility of the plaintiff reaching a profitable outcome, even if it won in court. What was the plaintiff thinking? more
"'Sucks.com is the rightmost anchor of nearly 20,000 domains registered today. Two thousand domains have 'stinks.com' on the right and about the same number of domains begin with the term 'boycott'," write the authors of the recently released paper The Power of Internet Gripe Sites. According to their (interesting) study, 35% of the "brandsucks" domains are owned by the brand while 45% are available for registration. They thus advise brand owners "to take a serious look at the traffic that these names garner and the kind of unique marketing opportunity they can afford." ...I do not fully agree with their conclusions... more
Sealing the cracks: a proposal to update the anti-cybersquatting regime to combat advertising-based cybersquatting is the title of an article by Christopher Varas in the April issue of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice. In this article, the author labels "modern cybersquatting" the monetization of domain names through PPC advertisements, and says that brand owners lack effective tools to combat this practice... more
The Internet Commerce Association (ICA) has posted a position paper and analysis of S. 2661, introduced on 2/25/08 in the US Senate. While we are firmly opposed to phishing and other criminal activities that may utilize domain names we are very concerned about the provisions of the proposal that appear to provide trademark owners with a means to avoid both UDRP and ACPA actions and alternatively bring private claims against domain names with a lower burden of proof and the potential for far higher monetary damages, without even requiring an allegation that the DN was in any way being utilized in a phishing scheme... more
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