Legal News

Namecheap Launches RespectOurPrivacy.com

Namecheap has teamed up with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Fight for the Future to launch RespectOurPrivacy.com, a website that informs people about a potential policy change to the  Whois database  that ICANN is considering. A Whois change could eliminate domain  privacy and proxy services for domain name registrations, and that could have a serious repercussions for many domain owners  and business owners.

When you visit  the  RespectOurPrivacy.com  website, you are given information about how you  can “let ICANN know that you object to any release of personal information without a court order.” Visitors are able to submit comments directly to ICANN via the website, and I was told more than 5,000 comments were already  submitted to ICANN over the weekend, and over 360 voicemails were left.

According to the website, here is the issue at hand:

Consider Adding a Non-Disparagement Clause

Let’s say you just closed a mega-deal. You’re pretty amped because the right buyer came with the right offer, and you closed a fantastic deal on a domain name. You may or may not have signed a non-disclosure agreement covering the negotiation and purchase price, but the company that bought it announces that it acquired the domain name from a cybersquatter. Not cool.

I’ve seen quite a few news reports, first person acquisition stories, and other types of articles that discuss how a company acquired a particular domain name. While most presumably won’t  divulge confidential information, the  company principals  might not be prevented from writing about the seller. Perhaps they were nice when negotiating for the sake of closing a deal, but behind closed doors, they are upset they had to pay a “cybersquatter” or someone who was “domain hoarding.” Whatever the case may be, you should protect yourself.

When I first wrote about

Walmart Files UDRP for Walmart.Horse

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Walmart.Horse UDRP

Last month, the  Walmart.Horse domain name was in  the news as the company sent a cease and desist letter to Jeph Jacques, the owner of the domain name. Jacques, replied to the C&D letter, stating, “I would argue that Walmart.horse is an obvious parody and therefore falls under fair use.

It looks like the company has decided to take further action to get control of the Walmart.Horse domain name.  According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website, Wal-mart Stores filed a UDRP for the Walmart.Horse domain name. The UDRP is WIPO Case D2015-0714.

When news first broke about

Taylor Swift Domain News is Much Ado About Nothing

During the last few days, a tremendous variety of publications wrote about Taylor Swift (or most likely her representatives) registering .Porn and .Adult domain names. There were articles from publications such as USA Today, Cosmopolitan, Fortune, Entertainment Weekly, CBS News, and many other news outlets from around the world.

In my opinion, this “news” topic is not news at all, and I don’t really understand what all the fuss is about. In fact, I think this tweet from Directnic says it best:

When it comes to domain name registrations, companies need to be diligent and proactive. Companies need to protect their trademarks, especially when it comes to urls that could be used in an embarrassing manner or in a way that could confuse a customer or prospect.

For Taylor Swift and her brand, I would

Domain Theft: The New Internet Scourge

Having your domain name stolen is like getting punched in the gut. You try to log on to do some work on your site, or update some product information, but nothing works. You can’t get in, and you can’t switch things back. Or you check your email to find a notice that your domain name has been successfully switched to the new registrar, but you didn’t initiate any switch. You might feel lost, confused, miserable, and just plain angry.

Fortunately, there are some things you can do to get your domain name back. First, change all your passwords. While changing passwords may seem a lot like closing the barn door after the horse already got out, you don’t want whoever hacked into your account and transferred your domain away to have any more access to anything belonging to you.

It won’t fix your problem, but it can help keep the hacker from getting to anything else in your email account, or transferring any more domains (if you have others) away from you.

Next, contact your registrar. You want to make sure they know about the problem as soon as possible. They may have a policy for those kinds of problems, or a procedure you can start on that will allow you to move toward getting your domain name back. They may also be less than helpful.

Either way, it’s important to make the effort to let them know what’s going on, as proof that you acted quickly and attempted to resolve the problem. Some registrars will be willing to file a complaint against the registrar to which the stolen domain was transferred, but that’s not the case with all of them.

If you don’t get a quick resolution from working with your registrar, there are more significant steps you can take. Although the UDRP process is not normally considered one of the steps you can take, recently an UDRP was filed and achieved the return of the domain name.

The case CIN –

Donald J. Trump Files UDRP for Trump.NYC

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Screen Shot 2015-02-24 at 8.34.49 AM

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website, Donald J. Trump has filed a UDRP for the Trump.NYC domain name. The UDRP is case #D2015-0293. Trump.NYC was registered in November of 2014.

Trump.NYC appears to be registered to a company based on Fifth Avenue in New York City. At the present time, the domain name resolves to a default GoDaddy landing page. There are PPC links on the page, but they appear to be pretty random.

According to an article published

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