Judge Orders OnlineNic to Fork Over $33 Million To Verizon

Posted August 27th, 2009

Verizon won the default judgment against China based OnlineNic in what is being reported as the largest against a cybersquatter in the history of mankind or at least the Internet.

Get the full skinny HERE.

Tags: judgment, OnlineNic, Verizon
Posted in Cybersquatting, Enforcement by Ken Taylor 

ICANN Down Under

Posted July 27th, 2009

Recap of Sydney ICANN Meeting — Critical Issues for Businesses
By Mike Rodenbaugh

The ICANN community gathered in Sydney in late June, for the second of three scheduled meetings in 2009.  The primary topics of conversation were the newly hired CEO, and several issues related to the introduction of new top-level domains (TLDs) coming in 2010.  The hot issues about new TLDs involve protection against cybersquatting, protection of the public from expanded opportunity to maliciously abuse the DNS, the introduction of Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) TLDs, and registry-registrar structural separation.  These issues are included among the 8 public comment periods currently open HERE (and 18 recently closed!)

There is plenty going on at ICANN these days, so here’s an update on the most critical issues for businesses of all shapes and sizes.  A broader update published monthly by ICANN policy staff is HERE.  The current timeline for new TLDs calls for a final version of the Applicant Guidebook by end of 2009, and applications from would-be operators in March 2010, with new TLDs coming live in the latter half of 2010.  Clearly ICANN staff and community have much work yet to do, and soon, if this schedule is to become reality.

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Tags: ccNSO, GNSO, ICANN, IDNs, IP Clearinghouse, IRT, new TLDS, Rod Beckstrom, Sydney, UDRP, URS
Posted in Anti-Counterfeiting, CCTLD's, Conferences, Cybersquatting, Enforcement, gTLDS, ICANN, Internet Security, Registrars, Registries, UDRP by Mike Rodenbaugh 

Bill Clinton Loses Battle for Domain Names

Posted June 5th, 2009

From the Huffington Post

Bill Clinton’s attempt to prevent Web of Deception’s Joseph Culligan from using his name for a series of web URLs — williamclinton.com, williamjclinton.com, and presidentbillclinton.com — was lost this week when an arbitration panel denied the former President’s complaint. See the full skinny HERE.

Tags: Bill Clinton, Joseph Culligan, NAF, UDRP
Posted in Cybersquatting, Enforcement, UDRP by Ken Taylor 

uBid Guns For GoDaddy

Posted May 5th, 2009

Ubid is suing GoDaddy over the company’s parked domains program. See the full skinny HERE.

Tags: ACPA, GoDaddy, parked domains, uBid
Posted in Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, Cybersquatting, Enforcement, parked domains, Registrars by Ken Taylor 

Cybersquatters Use India Courts To Stall Legal Action

Posted April 21st, 2009

A domain name registrar in India is exploiting the rules governing proceedings under ICANN’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) to frustrate trademark owners’ efforts to retrieve domain names from cybersquatters.

The UDRP rules require trademark owners who wish to file a complaint under the policy to state that they “will submit, with respect to any challenges to a decision in the administrative proceeding canceling or transferring the domain name, to the jurisdiction of the courts in at least one specified Mutual Jurisdiction.”  The defined term Mutual Jurisdiction means a court jurisdiction that covers either the relevant domain name registrar’s principal office or the domain name registrant’s address as listed in the Whois record at the time the complaint is filed.  Essentially, the UDRP complainant must elect whether it will litigate a judicial challenge to the outcome of the administrative proceeding in its opponent’s home jurisdiction or in the jurisdiction of the registrar, which is usually viewed as “neutral.”

The Mutual Jurisdiction requirement enables cybersquatters to make it harder on trademark owners by selecting a registrar strategically based on location.  Imagine that a cybersquatter outside the U.S. wishes to extort money from a U.S. trademark owner.  If he registers an infringing domain name with a registrar in his own country, it forces the trademark owner to consent in a UDRP complaint to litigate on the cybersquatter’s home field if the cybersquatter challenges the UDRP result.

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Tags: APCA, Cybersquatters, India, Mumbai, Mutual Jurisdiciton UDRP
Posted in Cybersquatting, Enforcement, ICANN, UDRP by Deborah Wilcox 

Trademarks in Chinese Cyberspace

Posted April 1st, 2009

If you are like many companies, you get emails regularly from Hong Kong or China that look like this:

We are a professional Internet consultant organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet intellectual property right protection. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company. On 2009-03-23, we received an application formally; one person named “Jacques Tits” wanted to apply for the Internet brand “[YOUR BRAND] ” and some domain names through our body. During our preliminary investigation, we found that these domain names’ keyword and internet brand is identical with your trademark. I wonder whether you consigned “Jacques Tits” to register these domain names through us or not? Or is “Jacques Tits” your business partner or distributor in Asia? Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please let the principal make a confirmation with me by telephone or email ASAP. In addition, I must state that we have time limited for one person or one company’s registration. It is just 15 days. If your company files doesn’t resent within the time limited. We will unconditionally authorize the application of “Jacques Tits”.

We asked Hong Kong resident and all around good guy, Joe Simone to fill us in from the front lines and to provide some insights on IP rights protection. Joe is a Partner, Baker & McKenzie, Beijing/Hong Kong.

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Tags: ADNRC, AIC, ALIBABA, BAIDU, China Telcom, Chinese UDRP, CIETC, CNNIC, DHGATE, EACHBNET, eBay China, HKIAC, INTA, keywords, PRC Trademark Office, PSB, QBPC, TAOBAO, TSB, wireless keywords
Posted in Anti-Counterfeiting, CCTLD's, Cybersquatting, Domain Sales and Auctions, Enforcement, ICANN, INTA, Internet Security, UDRP, WIPO by Joe Simone 

It’s Time to Embrace a New Beast: Web 2.0

Posted March 3rd, 2009

“Domain names, auctions, replica sites, keyword advertising, email”…to an in-house counsel team dealing with counterfeits on the Web, these terms often are read instead as “cybersquatting, distribution of counterfeits, counterfeit site, improper use of trademarks, spam.”

All of these Internet and Web platforms compete for our time and resources as in-house counsel and can make one believe that there is little on the Web that is not primarily used to help defraud or scam consumers and brands alike.  While we know this is not true – that the vast majority of uses are legitimate (okay, excepting replica sites, where the reverse is generally true) – it is easy nonetheless to become jaded and distrustful.
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Tags: blogs, counterfeits, Enforcement, Facebook, in-house counsel, MySpace, replica sites, Second Life, Social Networks, Twitter, Web 2.0
Posted in Anti-Counterfeiting, Cybersquatting, Enforcement, Internet Security, Social Networks, Web 2.0 by Stacey King 

KENIC “Dashes” Cybersquatting Activities In Kenya

Posted January 27th, 2009

KENIC, Kenya’s domain name registry, has implemented a precautionary measure that prohibits the registration of a domain name with a dash or hyphen if a version of the domain name has already been registered without a hyphen. The same applies if a domain name is first registered with a hyphen, the unhyphenated version will be blocked. For instance:

The registration of domainnamesco.ke will block the registration of domain-names.co.ke, likewise the registration of domain-names.co.ke will block the registration of domainnames.co.ke.

This system has been implemented to curb cybersquatting in addition to saving legitimate registrants the costs of registering different versions of their domain name. Perhaps other countries will take their cue from Kenya and we will start to see other more countries taking it upon themselves to step up to fight cybersquatting.

 To view the Kenyan whois database visit www.domainnames.co.ke.  

Posted in CCTLD's, Cybersquatting by Daniel Greenburg 

Verizon’s Holiday Present – A $33 Million Judgment Against a Cybersquatter

Posted January 12th, 2009

Over the holidays, a federal court in Northern California entered a default judgment of $33.15 million in favor of Verizon Communications in what may be the largest cybersquatting judgment in history.

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Posted in Cybersquatting, True Domain Crime by Ernest Grumbles