Category: Domain Name Theft

Consider the following scenario: You’re a successful business owner, and you have a customer base that’s expanding daily. Recently, you decided it’s time to start a website to continue growing your business, but when you try to register your trademark as your domain name, you find out someone else already owns it. Without warning, you […]

The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”) was created by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) and was introduced in 1999 to create a dispute resolution system for domain name issues. Registrants of domain names enter into contractual agreements with the issuer of the domain name (the “registrar”). Often, part of […]

Over the last fifteen years, federal courts in Michigan have heard nearly 50 cases involving alleged violations of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). Although each has contributed to a better understanding of cybersquatt…

On December 16th, an opinion from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals boosted the number of appellate courts agreeing to an interpretation of a rule related to trademarks and domain names. The court held that re-registering a domain name,…

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) creates a civil cause of action against someone who registers, traffics in, or uses a domain name that is confusingly similar to, or dilutive of, a trademark or personal name. Significantly, a person accused of violating the ACPA must have “a bad faith intent to profit” from the domain name to be found liable. Bad faith may seem like a vague concept, but the lawmakers who wrote the ACPA provided nine factors that might demonstrate whether one has acted in bad faith. Fortunately, the Internet attorneys at Revision Legal are very familiar with the ACPA, and we’d like to take the opportunity to explain these factors.

Consider the following scenario: You’re a successful business owner, and you have a customer base that’s expanding daily. Recently, you decided it’s time to start a website to continue growing your business, but when you try to register your trademark as your domain name, you find out someone else already owns it. Without warning, you […]

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (“ACPA”) is a federal statute that creates a civil course of action under intellectual property. Specifically, the statute is for owners of certain marks pursuing civil action against registrants of domain names that can negatively impact those marks and their owners. To be successful under the ACPA, the owner of […]

In recent years, a new form of crime has been emerging, leaving both law enforcement and the judicial system as a whole at a loss for how to approach it and what they can do to prevent it. Domain name theft, otherwise known as domain name hijacking, is the “wrongful taking of control of a […]

Identity theft and fraud are major possibilities if you are not protecting your registrar details adequately. When you register a domain name you are required to provide a collection of personal information, including your name, physical and email addresses, phone number, and administrative and technical contacts. Often a majority, if not all, of the information […]

In the Internet Age, opening a browser and punching in the name of a website has become a routine process. If the technology does what it’s supposed to, you will arrive at your cyber destination within seconds. Have you ever stopped to consider what all the letters and dots in the website’s address mean? Most […]