Legal News

Great PR Opportunity

I think it would be an AWESOME opportunity for either domain investors with connections or the ICA to step in and help this Congressman retrieve his domain name at registration fee cost to him.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_6369057

To sum this up, the first term congressman had his domain name expire (not close to being a generic/defensible name), and someone bought it and has pornographic PPC links up at Sedo. According to the article, everytime the staff called Sedo to attempt to buy it, the price increased. Although the congressman should have renewed his domain name, he is nice enough not to file a UDRP or lawsuit, which would have proliferated the public opinion that all domain investors have bad intentions. Is there any way we can help? How can we help? This is an opportunity to show that there is only a small percentage of people in this business who aren’t ethical, and the rest of us are hard working people not not trying to profit off of an innocent mistake or in tragedy in too many cases (VA Tech, Katrina, Columbine…etc way too many to name).

Domain Registration Pre-Dating a TM

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http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2007/d2007-0062.html

John Berryhill, a highly regarded domain attorney, was kind enough to reference this important UDRP case that may impact domain owners. The facts of the case are:

1) Original registrant sold CreditKeeper.com, a name that he registered in 2001.
2) UDRP was filed by HSBC Finance Corporation, as they have two registered trademarks for “Credit Keeper,” one granted in 2004 and the other in 2005, both of which were filed and approved after the domain name was created.
3) Respondant argued that he should be allowed to keep the name as it was registered prior to the TM, and those rights of the original registrant should be passed to him.

Attorney Berryhill argued that the new domain owner acquired all rights of the domain name, including the important rights that existed because the registration pre-dated the trademark approvals:

The Respondent contends that it acquired all rights to the domain name under a certain

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