Domain and Trademark Blog

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” – Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
With all the attention that Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) have garnered over recent months, is a rose by any other name still a rose? And moreover, does it really matter …

Are you leveraging the true value of your domain name portfolio?
In a recent analysis, we came across several brand owners who were losing tens of thousands of unique visitors to their Web properties each year because of the simple fact that their domain names didn’t resolve to relevant content.
How much do you stand to lose? …

Madonna! Madonna! Madonna!  What makes you think you are so special that you don’t have to observe trademark rights here in the United States?  She might need to take a HOLIDAAAY….
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Earlier this week, Madonna was sued by apparel manufacturer L.A. Triumph of Cerritos, CA over the use of the name “Material Girl” for her new …

I have the privilege of having worked in the domain industry for a decade now. At the beginning of that career path, I worked for a registrar that was aiming to be corporate, but still predominantly start up. As a result of that experience, there are many areas that I could compare to using a …

Late last week VeriSign, the registry operator for .COM and .NET, and Telnic, the registry operator for .TEL, submitted separate Registry Services Requests to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that would enable both to release previously unreleased 1 & 2 character domain names.
According to VeriSign request documents,
“…VeriSign intends to allocate single …

As you will certainly have been made aware by the numerous press articles on the subject, from 14th September, Google will extend advertisers’ rights to bid on brand names in all 27 countries of the EU. This is already the case in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland. The European Court of Justice ruled …

After 6 years of controversy, the ICM Registry’s application for the .XXX TLD was approved by the ICANN Board in late June 2010.  ICM is currently engaged in contract negotiations with ICANN and does not expect to launch until Q4 of 2010 or Q1 of 2011, however, in the interim the Registry has announced that …

The .EG Registry, the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA), has announced the launch schedule for domain name registration in the Arabic IDN.ccTLD for Egypt (.مصر ).  This new ccTLD will be launched in 3 phases:

Sunrise 1 (now closed) – Registration open to Governmental institutions.
Sunrise 2 (August 22, 2010 – TBA) – Registration open to those …

First of all, let’s look at what an IDN is. An IDN (Internationalised domain name), is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label that is displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in a language-specific script or alphabet. The Domain Name System, which performs a lookup service to translate user-friendly …

Your brands aren’t just pretty names. They are valuable assets. Do you know if they are being used by third parties without your knowledge? The earlier you catch infringements the less harm they cause. That’s why it’s important to monitor your brands through an integrated monitoring platform that can help …