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Potential trademark Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPM) at the 2nd level can be divided into three main areas -- each defined by their time relative to Top-Level Domain (TLD) launch... Of these, we believe the third, "After Launch," is the most fruitful path to explore. We believe it offers the most potential to protect the rights of trademark holders, the best balance between TM rights and the legitimate rights of others who may want to register names , and the most benefit to the trademark community at the lowest cost to them... more
Complainants have standing to proceed with a claim of cybersquatting under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) if the accused "domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights" (4(a)(i) of the Policy). Quickly within the first full year of the Policy's implementation (2000) Panels construed "rights" to include unregistered as well as registered marks, a construction swiftly adopted by consensus. more
It continues to surprise that some counsel in proceedings under the Uniform Domain Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) are unaware or oblivious of its evidentiary demands, by which I mean they file and certify complaints with insufficient evidence either of their clients' rights or their claims. Because the UDRP requires conjunctive proof of bad faith registration and bad faith use (as opposed to the disjunctive model of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act), it should be ingrained for counsel experienced in the jurisprudence to know they cannot hope to succeed with marks postdating registration of domain names. more
No one will disagree that disputes before arbitral tribunals and courts should be determined on the merits. I have noticed that some Panels appointed under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) have employed the words "objective" and "objectively" in their recent decisions. In pondering these linguistic choices, it seems to me that there are two possible reasons for their use; the first is more acceptable than the second. more
We now know how wireless carriers are going to continue the string of new G generations of cellular technology. 5G was originally defined to include spectrum up to 90 GHz or 100 GHz. In the last few years, international standards bodies have been developing new 6G standards in what is called the terahertz wavelengths between 100 GHz and 1 THz. more
It didn't take long for criticism of the Verizon/Google net neutrality proposal to start pouring in. "nterest groups, bloggers, and even Google fanboys [have started] discrediting the plan" according to one trade publication. Although most of the commentary simply echoes various groups' long-held positions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nation's foremost cyber-rights watchdog, provided a crucial insight about the plan that goes to the core of the net neutrality issue. more
The ordinary run of cybersquatting cases is neither "exceedingly close nor difficult." Quote from Harvest Dispensaries, Cultivations & Production Facilities, LLC v. Rebecca Nickerson / Rock City Harvest, FA2004001892080 (Forum June 26, 2020) which is one of those rare cases in which the case was exceedingly close and difficult. For 90% of the docket (the percentage has been creeping up since 2016), even when Respondent appears (which it mostly does not), there is neither a defense nor merit to Respondent's contentions. more
As the new-gTLD programme - the ICANN initiative to add a large number of new domain extensions (top-level domains, or TLDs) to the Internet - continues to see ongoing launches of new TLDs, we conduct a new retrospective of the activity landscape of the most recent extensions to have been launched. This new study focuses on all new-gTLDs to have entered their Sunrise or General Available periods since the start of 2023, following a previous overview by Stobbs of the full new-gTLD landscape. more
The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy now has seventeen years of history. A high percentage of disputes are indefensible and generally undefended. As the history lengthens, early registrants of dictionary word-, common phrase-, and arbitrary letter-domain names have been increasing challenged in two circumstances, namely by businesses who claim to have used the unregistered terms before respondents registered them and later by emerging businesses with no history prior to the registrations of the domain names. more
In all the recent uproar (New York Times, "Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube," Michael Helft, 4 July 2008) about the fact that Google has been forced to turn over a large pile of personally-identifiable information to Viacom as part of a copyright dispute (Opinion), there is a really interesting angle pointed out by Dan Brickley (co-creator of FOAF and general Semantic Web troublemaker)... more
A Swedish court on Friday found all four defendants guilty in a copyright test case involving one of the world's biggest free file-sharing websites. "The Stockholm disctrict court has today found guilty the four individuals that were charged with accessory to breaching copyright laws," the court said in a statement. "The court has sentenced each of them to one year in prison." more
Public Interest Registry (PIR) announced the creation of the DNS Abuse Institute about two months ago as it believes that "every .ORG makes the world a better place" and "anything that gets in the way of that is a threat," notably in the form of Domain Name System (DNS) abuse. To show support for the initiative, WhoisXML API analyzed monthly typosquatting data feeds for December 2020, January 2021, and February 2021 to identify .ORG domain trends... more
In The Limits of Filtering, Evan Engstrom and Nick Feamster argue eloquently that the costs of a "takedown-staydown" system to defend against copyright infringement would be prohibitive for online service providers (OSPs) and therefore deprive OSPs of otherwise interested investors. I agree that Engstrom and Feamster raise some valid points, particularly including that content recognition technologies are not perfect... However, we must also remember that the current DMCA regime imposes significant costs... more
A group of major ISPs and major content providers have agreed on a a mechanism to enforce copyright laws in the network. While full details have not yet been released, the basic scheme involves using previously designed IP flags to denote public domain content. That is, given general copyright principles, it is on average a shorter code path and hence more efficient to set the flag on exempt material. more
We are all accustomed to purchasing and/or using copyrighted material in one fashion or another. From music, movies-(BluRay), e-books-(Kindle), computers-(software), mobile phones-(iPhone) and games; the umbrella of companies wanting to restrict access to its products continues to grow and become increasingly restrictive. more
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