–Dan Kelly, Attorney
Time is running out to take defensive action for opting registered trademarks out of the forthcoming “.xxx” domain space. Depending upon the registrar that you use to do this, an opt-out application is due by October 28, 2011, will cost around $300, and will prohibit third parties from registering opted-out trademarks as
An interesting trademark case recently was filed in federal district court in Minnesota, Chevron Intellectual Property LLC et al v. MDW Equity Partners, LLC, a pdf copy of the complaint here.
As beleaguered BP‘s once valuable goodwill and reputation continues to flounder in the court of public opinion with the tragic gulf oil spill
–Dan Kelly, Attorney
I enjoy stumbling upon niche products and markets that I am completely oblivious to in my day-to-day life. One such recent find was a store dedicated to model trains. Growing up, I built a few models–typically aircraft, and eventually model rockets. I’ve consequently always had a dim awareness that model train building
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–Dan Kelly, Attorney
A bomb exploded in the domain name aftermarket world on Wednesday. A well-known domain name auction house called SnapNames.com announced that one of its (now former) employees had been bidding as a shill in many online domain name auctions run by the company since 2005. SnapNames has an FAQ page on the matter here.
It is not difficult to decry the many abuses that have gone on in the domaining industry: cybersquatting, typosquatting, domain name tasting, domain name kiting, pay-per-click fraud, and now shill bidding (to name a few). As these abuses tend to make for the juciest news, it is not surprising that some (including trademark attorneys) accuse the whole domain name business (or “industry”) of being dirty. But law, being a generally slow, blunt instrument, has so far caught up with only the first two of the abuses listed above. What is less widely reported is that, for all of its wild-westness, the DN business has policed itself (e.g. cybersquatting, domain tasting) without resort to government intervention. This is as it should be.
Even so, self-policing is also slow to catch up to opportunists, so caveat emptor is the rule of the day in domain name transactions, especially when bidding at an auction, especially an online auction. I recommend reading any auction site’s rules, terms and conditions carefully before engaging in a transaction. Some of these sites will readily represent both buyer and seller, which is a situation well-known to lawyers and real estate agents as a “conflict of interest.” Caveat emptor, indeed.Continue Reading Fraud at Domain Name Auction House