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The Domaining Europe conference began in Valencia, Spain almost a decade ago and the first seven shows in the annual series were staged at the Hotel Sorolla Palace there. In 2016 conference founder Dietmar Stefitz decided to take the show on the road, staging that year's event in The Hague, Netherlands, followed by the 2017 show in Berlin, Germany this past May. more
WHOIS access and development of an interim GDPR compliance model remains THE hot topic within the ICANN community. Developments are occurring at a break-neck pace, as ICANN and contracted parties push for an implementable solution ahead of the May 25, 2018 effective date of the GDPR... ICANN is now poised to formally publish the convergence model, although the community continues to discuss and seek a solution that is acceptable for all stakeholders. more
Donuts Inc. today announced it has acquired the .TRAVEL domain name from registry operator Tralliance Registry Management Company; the .TRAVEL domain becomes Donuts' 239th TLD. more
Cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin) are all the rage -- so, naturally, related domain name disputes are, too. The wild fluctuations in cryptocurrency prices (Bitcoin hit a low of close to $6,000 this week, after reaching an all-time high of more than $19,000 only two months ago, and less than $1,000 a year ago) have attracted speculators, regulators and now even cybersquatters. more
With GDPR coming into effect this May, it is almost a forgone conclusion that WHOIS as we know it today, will change. Without knowing the full details, how can companies begin to prepare? First and foremost, ensuring that brand protection, security and compliance departments are aware that a change to WHOIS access is on the horizon is an important first step. Just knowing that the ability to uncover domain ownership information is likely to change in the future will help to relieve some of the angst that is likely to occur. more
The way the Internet operates drove a wedge between strings of lexical and numeric characters used as marks and alphanumeric strings used as addresses. Domain names were described by Steve Forbes in a 2007 press release as virtual real estate. It is, he said, analogous to the market in real property: "Internet traffic and domains are the prime real estate of the 21st century." more
Unicode's goal, which it meets quite well, is that whatever text you want to represent in whatever language, dead or alive, Unicode can represent the characters or symbols it uses. Any computer with a set of Unicode typefaces and suitable layout software can display that text. In effect, Unicode is primarily a typesetting language. Over in the domain name system, we also use Unicode to represent non-ASCII identifiers. That turns out to be a problem because an identifier needs a unique form, something that doesn't matter for typesetting. more
Before the Internet, the sole competition for strings of characters employable as marks was other businesses vying to use the same strings for their own products and services. National registries solved this competition by allowing businesses in different channels of commerce to register the same strings but prohibiting competitors in the same industries from using identical or confusingly similar marks on the grounds that they were likely (at best) to create confusion and (at worst) to deceive the public. more
On January 24, 2018, ICANN's Business Constituency (BC) and Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) co-hosted an event to discuss the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and its implications on access to the WHOIS database. ICANN's CEO and General Counsel joined the discussion, as did stakeholders from across the ICANN community. The event was timely and well attended with over 200 participants attending in-person or virtually. more
I am a student of life, learning one hard lesson at a time. In fact, I actually dropped out of my last year of college to start a tech company in a new space called the internet. I was an entrepreneur running an online service prior to the advent of the world wide web in 1992, back when Pine, Usenet, and Gopher ruled the information superhighway. Over the last 25 years, I have learned a great deal about technology adoption cycles by launching six internet companies, each at the forefront of a new technology wave. more
The Trademark Act of 1946 defines trademarks and service marks to include "any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof." Marks composed of lexical and numeric elements (as opposed to images) also can be described as strings of characters. Before the Internet there was no commercial use of such strings other than as marks, but the functionality of the Internet depends on strings of lexical and numeric characters in the form of domain names that serve as electronic addresses. more
The typical daily accounting of decisions filed in disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) may include an award or two dismissing complaints (three is particularly noteworthy: weddingfleamarket.com, dme.com, and scheduleflow.com from the Forum for January 20, 2018), but overwhelmingly complaints are granted not dismissed. Let us imagine a trademark or service mark that is neither a dictionary word nor composed of common combinations, would anyone be surprised when the Panel rules in Complainant's favor? more
It is safe to say that 2017 was a turbulent year in more ways than one. There was the ongoing clash between WHOIS information and user privacy, the hope that top-level domains would finally take off and multiple hacks of large corporations that reignited talks about cybersecurity. While many of these topics are essential and will likely resurface again in the coming year, it is also important to look back at 2017 through unambiguous data. more
Doug Isenberg notes in a recent CircleID essay that two records in domain name disputes were broken in 2017, namely number of cybersquatting claims (3,036 in 2016, 3,073 in 2017) and number of domain names implicated (5354 in 2016, 6370 in 2017). Fairly consistently from year to year, approximately twenty percent of filings are terminated (withdrawn): whether by settlement or nolo contendere we don't know. (All of these statistics come from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). more
Would you be interested in helping guide the future of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit operator of the .ORG, .NGO and .ONG domains? If so, the Internet Society is seeking nominations for three positions on the PIR Board of Directors. The nominations deadline is 23:00 UTC on Thursday, February 1, 2018. Find out more about the positions and the required qualifications. more
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