YouTube's Battle For YouTube.CL
The domain wars continue. Today’s bout: YouTube.com, Google's popular video site, is threatening to launch a lawsuit to gain control over YouTube.cl, a domain that currently hosts a website developed for Chilean audiences, aggregating online videos from YouTube.com.
The issue at stake in this confrontation is whether Andrés Chapero, the man who registered YouTube.cl with knowledge [...]
Microsoft Sues Competing Cybersquatters
In a return to anti-competitive strategies that got it into trouble with the U.S. justice department years ago, Microsoft is attacking its competitors like there is no tomorrow. This time, they go after competing cybersquatters, who, in cooperation with Google and Yahoo, apparently take a big bite out of Microsoft's domain typo profits.
As the Daily [...]
WIPO: Cybersquatting On The Rise!
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) released a sensational press release entitled "Cybersquatting Remains On The Rise With Further Risk To Trademarks From New Registration Practices"
The issues:
The number of cybersquatting disputes filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2006 increased by 25% as compared to 2005.
WIPO sees this as evidence that cybersquatting is [...]
Shangri-La: Land of Eternal Youth?
In a recent WIPO arbitration case, the owner of ShangriLa.com lost the domain to an Asian hotel group by the same name.
The panel in charge of the case noted that even though the expression "Shangri-La" had originated in a 1933 novel and has a dictionary meaning, the registrant had also registered the domain fourseason.com, allegedly [...]
Invalid Whois Email? There Goes Your Domain…
Domain registrar GoDaddy recently deleted the domain FamilyAlbum.com simply because the domain registrant, Eric Roach, didn't respond to an email they sent him.
While it is not entirely clear whether the email bounced or whether the domain owner chose not to respond, Eric had in fact been using a valid mailing address and phone number in [...]
Inventor of "MOTORAZR" Wins Domain Dispute Against Motorola
Mobile phone company Motorola has failed in its attempt to appropriate the domain name MOTORAZR.com without compensation from the domain's original registrant, Vincent Nguyen of R3 Media.
Nguyen, who runs the phone and gadget review sites SlashPhone and SlashGear, had coined the expression MOTORAZR in July 2004, which led to his registration of MOTORAZR.com for a [...]
Microsoft Quietly Making Untold Millions
Assume for a second that you're among the almost 80% of people that use Internet Explorer to surf the web. You're looking for Lexus Financial Services. You know that their actual domain name is LexusFinancial.com. But for some reason you enter Lexus-Financail.com into your browser bar - and you're in good company, because millions of [...]