Domain Names

ICANN Must Now Decide String Similarity Question

Yesterday, a decision on a string confusion objection was reached by a dispute resolution provider that resulted in a scenario that ICANN and the Applicant Guidebook had not addressed - conflicting opinions have been rendered by expert panelists ruling on the exact same pair of strings. One of our applications now hangs in the balance. The expert panelist for the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) assigned to decide the string confusion objection filed by VeriSign against United TLD's .CAM application, issued a decision sustaining VeriSign's objection that .CAM and .COM are confusingly similar. more

Trademarks and Domain Names Composed of Common Terms

The lexical material from which trademarks are formed is drawn from the same social and cultural resources available to everyone else, which includes domain name registrants. Since trademarks are essentially a form of communication, it is unsurprising that a good number of them are composed of common terms (dictionary words, descriptive phrases, and shared expressions) that others may lawfully use for their own purposes. more

Reducing Unreachable ICANN Registrations

Recently ICANN published a report on inaccurate registration data in her own databases. Now the question is presented to the world how can we mitigate this problem? There seems to be a very easy solution. ... The question to this answer seems simple. To know who has registered with an organisation. This makes it possible to contact the registered person or organisation, to send bills and to discuss policy with the members. more

All New gTLD Registrations Should Be Subject to Sunrise Periods - Even Reserved Names

Planning to register your trademark as a domain name during a Sunrise Period only to find out that the registration appears on a Reserved Names list? There are a number of reasons why a domain that matches your trademark is appearing on a Reserved Names list. First of all, if the domain desired is the subject of Name Collision, it may appear on a Reserved Names list. Although this is not true for all registries, as some operators are allowing domains that have been the subject of Name Collision to be allocated during Sunrise, but not delegated. more

Typosquatting Claims Against Security Researcher Are Legally Complicated - Gioconda v. Kenzie

Kenzie is a security researcher who has registered numerous domain names that are typographic errors of well-known trademarks (e.g., rnastercard, rncdonalds, nevvscorp, rncafee, macvvorld, rnonster, pcvvorld). He points the domain names to the actual sites in question (e.g., rncdonalds points to mcdonalds.com), but he is looking to demonstrate how these typo domains are used for "social engineering" attacks. more

When is Similarity Confusing? Cybersquatting and Abusive Registration

The case I'm reporting on today has garnered attention from a number of quarters. One commentator, Andrew Allemann tells us that "[he's] struggling with this UDRP decision" and Nat Cohen of Telepathy Inc. in a couple of Tweets and a private conversation is concerned that the holding could be a Trojan Horse by erasing the distinction between merely confusing and confusingly similar. The problem centers on the Panel's holding that everyfamily.org is confusingly similar to EVERYTOWN... more

Halftime Is over for the New gTLD Applicants: Musings of a Hungry Marketer

As I sit in Schiphol airport awaiting the final leg of my journey home from ICANN Toronto, I'm thinking of all the work that lies ahead in the coming months. The sense of being caught in the holding pattern that descended over the industry after the Prague meeting and lasted into September, is evidently over. The wheels have thankfully begun to turn again on the path towards the new TLDs finally going live. more

GDPR, ICANN, and Registrar WHOIS

On Friday I was on a surprisingly interesting session at Rightscon 2018 in Toronto about GDPR and WHOIS. The panel consisted of Eleeza Agoopian from ICANN staff; Avri Doria who was recently appointed to the ICANN board; Elliot Noss who runs large registrar Tucows; Stephanie Perrin who has done a lot of privacy work for the Canadian government and as an ICANN volunteer, and me; Milt Mueller, who is now at Georgia Tech, moderated. more

Top Three Reasons to Just Say No to ICANN’s Current EOI gTLD Proposal

On December 9, 2009, the ICANN Board announced its intention to vote during its upcoming February 4, 2010 meeting to approve a plan by which ICANN would solicit "Expressions of Interest" (EOI) from prospective applicants for new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) such as .BLOG. But given a number of significant governance and public policy concerns raised by the current EOI proposal, the ICANN Board should take no action on it before the next in-person ICANN regional meeting--in Nairobi, March 3-7, 2010. more

.site Domain Names Eclipse .xyz in Dispute Proceedings

Despite the launch of more than 1,200 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) in recent years, .com remains - far and away - the top-level domain that appears most frequently in decisions under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). But, some new gTLDs are attracting more disputes, including .site, which has become the new gTLD that, so far this year, has appeared in the most UDRP decisions. The rise of .site represents a change from last year, when .xyz was the most-often disputed new gTLD. more

Closed Generics Debate Rages On

The new gTLD program continues to throw up last-minute debates on what is acceptable as a TLDs and what is not. The latest such verbal joust centers around closed generics. These are generic terms being applied for by applicants whom, should they be successful, will not open the TLD up to everyone on an equal access basis. As an example, think .book being run by Amazon and only available to Amazon customers. more

Happy Birthday .CAT and ICANN

Today, four years after the launch of the Catalan linguistic and cultural registry, Google reports that there are 90 million pages of Catalan content under the some 36 thousand .CAT domains. As imperfect as Google's tools are as a metric, the correct observation is that the use of .CAT by Catalans vastly exceeds the expectations of its initial proponents... more

Don’t Fall for This Domain Name ‘Expiration’ Scam

If, like me and my clients, you ever receive an email about a domain name expiration, proceed with great suspicion -- because many of these "notices" are a sham. They're designed to sell you services you don't need or to trick you into transferring your domain name to another registrar. Usually, the emails can safely be ignored. Here's an example: As shown, an important-looking email from "Domain Service" refers to a specific domain name in the subject line. more

Whatever Happened with Namespace Collision Issues and the gTLD Round of 2012

The new gTLD program of 2012, based on the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) policy recommendations of 2007, has been both a success and mess. In terms of its success, many new and innovative names are being introduced on the Internet, more most every day. The mess has involved ad-hoc, independent decisions by the Board and implementation decisions by ICANN staff that have resulted in variety of problems including a broken community evaluation process... more

Excessive Offers to Sell Domain Names: Evidence of Bad Faith or Bona Fide Business Practice?

Not infrequently heard in domain name disputes are cries of shock and gnashing of teeth that domain name holders may lawfully offer their inventory at excessive prices. Take for example TOBAM v. M. Thestrup / Best Identity, D2016-1990 (WIPO November 21, 2016) (<tobam.com>). Respondent accused Complainant of bullying which Complainant denied... more