The Federal Trade Commission has permanently halted the operations of Canadian con artists who allegedly posed as domain name registrars and convinced thousands of U.S. consumers, small businesses and non-profit organisations to pay bogus bills by leading them to believe they would lose their domain names unless they paid. … more

Abstract: The year 2009 marks the tenth anniversary of domain name regulation under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) and the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Adopted to combat cybersquatting, these rules left a confused picture of domain name theory in their wake. Early cybersquatters registered Internet domain names corresponding with others’ trademarks to sell them for a profit. … more

Since 1985, non-state actors under Jon Postel’s leadership have experimented creating virtual national spaces on the Internet through so-called “country code top level domain names” (ccTLDs). There are 251 ccTLDs on the Internet. In 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) - the newly established coordination body for Internet addresses including ccTLDs - stressed out the principle of private sector leadership instead of public sector administration of Internet identifiers. ICANN’s coordination of ccTLDs required state actors to comply with the principle of private sector leadership in a top-down manner. … more

WIPO, Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday and Wednesday, October 19 and 20, 2010

Overview

The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center is internationally recognized as the leading institution in the resolution of Internet domain name disputes. Since December 1999, the Center has administered over 32,000 proceedings, of which over 17,000 under the WIPO-initiated Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) adopted by ICANN. The UDRP applies to disputes in the generic top-level domains (gTLDs) (e.g., .com, .net, .org, .mobi), as well as an increasing number of ccTLDs. … more

The European Court of Justice established broad new criteria for rejecting abusive .EU domain name registrations, according to a report in the Courthouse News Service. … more

Abstract: In Kremen v. Cohen the Ninth Circuit recognized a property right in domain names, defining property as any form of intangible benefit that is distinct and excludable. This reasoning is flawed for three reasons: (1) it is grounded in a faulty understanding of property law; (2) it is over-inclusive, capturing a variety of things and benefits that have been explicitly removed from the realm of property; (3) and it is under-inclusive, as it fails to consider a number of interests necessary for evaluating if something should be deemed property. This doctrine, broadly applied, would result in a massive expansion of legal interests classified as property. … more

Cybersquatting can have harmful effects on a brand’s reputation, sometimes serious, sometimes minor. But it is a serious problem worldwide and to discuss the issue there will be a free online seminar this Thursday afternoon (15:00 Eastern US time/21:00 European time). … more

A recent Australian Federal Court ‘Fast Track List’ decision confirmed that use of a trade mark in a domain name, along with use of the trade mark on associated web sites, can constitute trade mark infringement. This list is an increasingly important part of a trade mark owner’s arsenal in dealing with trade mark infringement and misuse of domain names. … more

by Rodney D. Ryder & Ashwin Madhavan [The Icfai University Journal of Intellectual Property Rights]

Abstract: The advent of technologies has brought many complexities. The World Wide Web and domain names are the contributions of technological development during the recent past. The new tech-inventions have resulted in various issues of the intellectual property rights and their protection. The relations between the domain name and copyrights on one hand and the trademarks on the other, are well envisaged and an opinion is cropping up whether the use of marks in the name and style of domain names are diluting the trademarks. … more

In 2009, the number of disputed domain names arbitrated by WIPO jumped for the third consecutive year, jumping by 18.5 per cent to 4,688 from 3,958 in 2008. This compares to an increase in domain registrations of eight percent over the same period to 192 million from 177 million in 2008. … more

A controversial domain name registrant is annoying some of Australia’s largest companies by registering their domain names in obscure country code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) and then attempting to sell the domain names to them at vastly inflated prices. … more

UDRP Arbitrator Sandra Franklin offered her insights on UDRP arbitrations concerning trademarks, domain names, and cybersquatting issues in a Cybersquatting Law Radio interview. … more

SIDN has modified the Dispute Resolution Regulations for .NL domain names as of 4 March 2010. As a result of the changes, much of the correspondence that previously went by post will in future go by email. … more

Researchers at Harvard University have discovered that Google may be making around half a billion dollars per year via typosquatting, says a NewScientist report. … more

The saga of the sex.com domain name has taken another turn. The saga was expertly described by Kieren McCarthy in his book called Sex.com. In the publicity for the book McCarthy asks “how far would you go to get the internet’s most valuable property?” … more