Trademark Overreaching and Faux Cybersquatting Claims

Trademarks can be strong in two ways: either inherently distinctive (arbitrary or fanciful marks), or composed of common elements that have acquired distinctiveness (descriptive or suggestive marks). Trademarks can also be weak in two ways: either composed of common elements, or lacking significant marketplace presence other than in their home territories. Panelists have seen them all, even by respondents alleging trademark rights registered later in time to complainant's. more

ICANN Should Clarify Position On Key Word New TLDs

Back in September a number of domain name industry leaders wrote to ICANN to express deep-felt concerns about some companies' declared plans for generic domain name extensions. We have sent ICANN another letter this week which is also planned to be distributed in a press release included here in this post. more

ICANN at a Crossroads: GDPR and Human Rights

The European Data Protection Board certainly has been keeping its records straight. Its 27 May statement starts with the following: "WP29 has been offering guidance to ICANN on how to bring WHOIS in compliance with European data protection law since 2003." All internet users have dealings with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, yet the vast majority have never heard of ICANN. more

PRISM and the Administration State Strikes Back

It is a safe assumption that if you are reading this post, you like technology. If that is the case, then you understand the tremendous economic, cultural, and human rights benefits an open, universal, and free Internet provides. That freedom is under attack. And it is our responsibilities, as stakeholders in a successful Internet, to balance governments and have an open dialog on the topic. more

World Notices That Verisign Said Three Months Ago That They Had a Security Breach Two Years Ago

The trade press is abuzz today with reports about a security breach at Verisign. While a security breach at the company that runs .COM, .NET, and does the mechanical parts of managing the DNS root is interesting, this shouldn't be news, at least, not now. Since Verisign is a public company, they file a financial report called a 10-Q with the SEC every quarter. According to the SEC's web site, Verisign filed their 10-Q for June through September 2011 on October 28th. more

After 21 Years, Actor David Duchovny Wins His Domain Name

While plenty of UDRP decisions have made clear that a trademark owner's delay in bringing an action against a cybersquatter (often referred to as "laches") is typically not a defense, actor David Duchovny's decision to file a UDRP complaint nearly 21 years after the domain name davidduchovny.com was registered may set a record for the longest wait in a domain name dispute. more

Phishing Registrar Accounts: eNom is First Target

Criminals are now looking to use established domain names, via phishing targeted at domain registrars. This is possibly related to ICANN finally moving to stop the black hat registrars of the world. According to the first report on the matter sent yesterday to Registrar Operations (reg-ops) mailing list, the attacks seem to be run by gang of child pornography spammers. more

Will Googlerola Be Able to Fight Data Caps?

"Is Google Turning Into a Mobile Phone Company?" asks the headline in Andrew Ross Sorkin's New York Times story. Wrong question, IMHO. But is Google doing the deal at least partly to give it leverage over wireless providers? I think so. The biggest threat to the growth of Smart Phones and tablets and other Google businesses like YouTube is the imposition of data caps and metered pricing by wireless providers like at&t and Verizon Wireless. more

Institutionalizing Consumer Trust and Public Interest at ICANN

For an organization where people argue for hours over arcane minutiae, it's remarkable that virtually everyone agrees that ICANN should serve the "global public interest" and build "consumer trust" in the Internet. Although it's only three pages long, ICANN's Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) cites "public interest" five times and "consumer trust" eight times. So at the ICANN meeting today in Cartagena, Colombia, a group of participants explored ways to "institutionalize" these concepts within the organization. more

Adopting IDN to Reach New Untapped Markets

An IDN is a domain name which uses a particular encoding and format to allow a wider range of scripts to represent domain names such as Gujarati, Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari and many more scripts. In simple words, a domain name with non-English characters will be called an Internationalized Domain Name. Humans have a variety of languages and alphabets that are familiar to them, and domain names do too. IDN unlocks an increased familiarity and affinity for humans. more

ITU Staff Gone Wild

In virtually all governmental legislative bodies, the staff is there to provide secretariat services for the government representatives. The staff role does not include telling the representatives what decisions they should be making. The stricture is supposed to be the same at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for its treaty making activities. It is with some amazement that last week, the ITU secretariat staff showed up at a seminar in Bangkok they helped schedule... more

What Will Be the Magic Number for New gTLD Applications?

With the application launch period scheduled to begin in less than three months, everyone wants to know just how many new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) applications will be submitted. In terms of the number of applications to be submitted, I've seen estimates putting the figure as low as 500. But just last week, an industry insider told me that he thought the number could go as high as 3,500. more

New gTLDs: What About 10 Years Ago?

In 2003 - what did we have in terms of domain names? In 2003, the .AERO, .BIZ, .COOP, .INFO and .NAME Registries were just born. The . .MUSEUM Top-Level Domain was born that very year and .ASIA, .CAT, .JOBS, .MOBI, .PRO, .TEL and .TRAVEL did not exist yet. However, .EU was on its way. Although this particular TLD was a country code Top-Level Domain targeted at the European Union, it was awaited for by many brands in its Sunrise Period. more

Is Your Company on the Sidelines for Getting Its Own TLD? Here are 6 Questions Worth Considering

By now, I've probably spoken with close to a hundred brand owners who are all trying to make some very important decisions about whether or not to apply for a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD). Everyone wants to know what "the other guy" is doing. But for the most part (with the exceptions of Canon and Hitachi), brand owners have been tight-lipped about their intentions. Even in a recent New gTLD webinar hosted by MarkMonitor (primarily attended by brand owners), when asked in an anonymous poll whether they intended to apply... more

How to Abolish the DNS Hierarchy… But It’s a Bad Idea

There's been a fair amount of controversy of late about ICANN's decision to dramatically increase the number of top-level domains. With a bit of effort, though and with little disruption to the infrastructure -- we could abolish the issue entirely. Any string whatsoever could be used, and it would all Just Work. That is, it would Just Work in a narrow technical sense; it would hurt innovation and it would likely have serious economic failure modes. more