Law

Core Principles of Domain Name Law Created in UDRP Proceedings

When in the Fall of 1999 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) implemented the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, it did not come with a fully formed jurisprudence. Panelists were essentially on their own in creating it. They had some guidance from a lengthy and detailed report published by the World Intellectual Property Organization ... and a basket of principles derived from trademark law, but panelists had to build the jurisprudence from scratch.

What It Takes to Prove Common Law Rights in UDRP Complaints

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.

Hidden in Plain Sight: FCC Chairman Pai’s Strategy to Consolidate the U.S. Wireless Marketplace

While couched in noble terms of promoting competition, innovation and freedom, the FCC soon will combine two initiatives that will enhance the likelihood that Sprint and T-Mobile will stop operating as separate companies within 18 months. In the same manner at the regulatory approval of airline mergers, the FCC will make all sorts of conclusions sorely lacking empirical evidence and common sense.

Balancing Rights: Mark Owners, Emergent Businesses, and Investors

Is there any act more primary than naming? It comes before all else and makes possible what follows. For the most part, names are drawn from cultural assets: collections of words, geographic locations, family names, etc. They can be valuable, which is why they are guarded, protected, and hoarded. The balancing of rights among those competing for names is a deliberate feature of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

A Lesson from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Domain Name Disputes

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been making news as the result of controversial changes brought about under the new Trump administration -- including the planned removal of "several agency websites containing detailed climate data and scientific information" -- the EPA also has generated some (lesser-known) domain name news: The agency won a decision under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) for the domain name noattacks.org.

Craigslist Gets a $40 Million CAN-SPAM Judgment

Classified ad site craigslist is famously protective of its contents. While they are happy for search engines like Google to index the listings, they really, really do not like third parties to scrape and republish their content in other forms. In 2013 craigslist sued a company called 3taps which had created an API for craigslist data. They also sued real estate site Padmapper, which showed craigslist and other apartment listings on a map, something craigslist didn't do at the time.

Internet for All Now: Legislation That Needs Your Support

California was recently reminded that rain can be very dangerous. In February, the nation's tallest dam, the Oroville dam in northern California, became so overloaded with rain that over a 100,000 people had to evacuate their homes. Many of them ended up at the fairgrounds, a common place for rural communities to gather in times of disaster. Many rural fairgrounds remain unconnected to broadband Internet services, which can make a dangerous situation worse. Especially during critical times, the public must be able to access resources and communicate with their loved ones through the Internet.

The Limits of Notice and Takedown

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...

Why Cancel a Domain Name in a UDRP Case?

While the most common results of a UDRP proceeding are either transfer of a disputed domain name to a complainant or denial (that is, allowing the respondent to retain it), there is another possible outcome: cancellation. I'm always surprised to see a UDRP decision in which a domain name is cancelled. True, many trademark owners don't really want to obtain control of a disputed domain name (and, instead, they simply want to get it taken away from a cybersquatter).

In Whose Language? Cybersquatting by Foreigners

There are no gatekeepers to prevent registrants from acquiring domain names incorporating marks that potentially violate third-party rights. Anyone anywhere can acquire domain names composed of words and letters in languages not its own through a registrar whose registration agreement is in the language of the registrant. For example, a Chinese registrant of a domain name incorporating a Norwegian mark as in <statoil.store> in which Complainant requests the proceeding be in English notes that Chinese is not an official language in Norway.