In an article by stock analysis site,  Trefis,  which bills itself as a site that "helps you understand how company's products impact its stock price", said today that VeriSign "is on the verge of losing an antitrust lawsuit filed by Coalition For ICANN Transparency (CFIT), a non-profit organization that represents website owners." "A CFIT victory would attract new players to the market, … [Read more...]

In a WIPO decision released yesterday a domain of generic term , TractorSupply.mobi, was given to the Trademark holder. Here are the facts of the case: "Complainant or its predecessors have operated a retail business under the TRACTOR SUPPLY COMPANY service mark since 1938." It has adopted several versions of the service mark, including TRACTOR SUPPLY, TRACTOR SUPPLY CO. AND TSC. … [Read more...]

In a civil lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court of New York's Allegany County last month, Ceglia vs. Zuckerberg & Facebook, , Paul Ceglia said he signed a contract with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2003 to develop and design a website called TheFacebook.com (I like the sound of that better). A New York judge's recently granted an temporary order blocking any transfer of the … [Read more...]

While URDP are decided daily its pretty rare to find a Federal Court decision involving domain names and ever rarer to find a court that rules in favor of the domain name holder, but that's exactly what happened in the case of TOYOTA MOTOR SALES U.S.A., INC. v. TABARI a decision just released on Thursday by the Ninth Circuit for the United States Court of Appeals. In that case a couple who are … [Read more...]

I been reviewing the lawsuit that John Zuccarini filed this week against NameJet.com, NetworkSolutions, Enom.com and VeriSign. (pdf) Here is some quick background. There were 14 domains that were owned by Zuccarini, but held by a Receiver which managed the domains on behalf of a creditor of Zuccarini,  which were auctioned off by NameJet.com for a total of $80K, when the receiver appearently … [Read more...]

In a case which was decided about a month ago, but just brought to my attention by a reader today, a one person WIPO panel took the domain name, UltimateGuitar.com away from Domain Capital which financed it on behalf of an undisclosed owner and gave it to the owner of Ultimate-Guitar.com, based on a "common law" trademark. This decision has  made it onto my worst of 2010 list. Here are the … [Read more...]

Europe’s Court of Justice has confirmed that use of a competitor’s name as an Internet advertising keyword does not constitute a violation of European trademark law. The case involved two companies Primakabin and Portakabin, which both manufacture temporary sheds and buildings. Primakabin used keywords like “portakabin” and mis-spelled variants “portacabin” in keywords it used with … [Read more...]