Interview With trendicator: YXL.COM Stolen and Recovered | Domain Magnate - What is your advice to other domainers to prevent having they names stolen
1. update your whois info if you don’t want to lose your domains…
2. Keep your computer secure…if something looks wrong with your computer, it probably is; so reinstall your computer, believe you me, it’s worth it. that’s the only way that you can be sure that you’ve rid of the viruses.
3. keep your email accounts secure; my emails were compromised, and i subsequently lost my domains; i’m just glad that i got my email accounts back in the end….if you use gmail.com, read this: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=gmail&answer=45938
4. set up different accounts at godaddy…using different passwords…so even if one of your accounts is compromised, you wouldn’t lose them all
5. keep a log of your domains just in case…godaddy wouldn’t give me a list of my lost domains for security reasons…so even though i know the number of domains i lost, i don’t know exactly what they are….even if you’ve got receipts of them, it takes a long time to compile the list (if you’ve got many domains, that is)
Domain name theft is a common occurrence. Yet, most people take their domain name for granted, even when they are generating substantial revenue through their web site. Don't wait until a domain thief steals your domain name. Protect yourself from becoming the victim of a stolen domain name. Contact a domain name dispute attorney for more information.
Technorati Tags: stolen domain name, domain theft
Parking pages remain under attack from advertisers as another lawsuit is filed against Google by one of its AdWords advertisers. It is unclear why this particular advertiser did not simply change their campaign settings to exclude the content network. In a previous post, it was suggested that Google may black list many parking pages from its AdSense program. Google previously stopped placing ads on its parked pages.
Google Hit with Another Suit For Fraud From PPC Program: Is this Final Straw For Domain Parking?
According to a report in Media Post Today, Google has been hit with a fraud lawsuit from its parked domain program, which serves pay-per-click ads on Web pages for a third time this summer. This newest case, a potential class-action lawsuit, filed this week in federal district court in Chicago, was brought by a container company, JIT Packaging. The case joins a putative class-action lawsuit filed in San Jose, Calif. last month by Hal Levitte, an attorney who took out search ads, and one brought in San Jose by online retailer RK West, which operates the e-commerce site Malibu Wholesale.
As in the other two lawsuits, JIT Packaging alleges that Google displayed search ads on “low-quality” sites that yielded almost no conversions. Technorati Tags: cybersquatting, domain parking, trademark
A recent reverse domain hijacking decision in Collective Media, Inc. v. CKV / COLLECTIVEMEDIA.COM is interesting to any lawyer who practices domain dispute law. The law firm bringing the Complaint Lowenstein Sandler PC advertises as a large law firm specializing in domain name disputes as evidenced by a search of their web site for the words "domain name." Considering that the domain name was registered 5 years before Complainant's trademark application was even filed and 3 years before claimed first use of the trademark, and that it contains two generic words, it is hard to imagine whether the lawyers were thinking beyond the billable hour when they filed this one.
WIPO Domain Name Decision: D2008-0641 In addition, the Complainant’s case was weak in other respects. The Complainant provided no strong evidence of its trademark rights. The Complainant has no registered trademark. The Complainant provided evidence of having only a pending application for a registered mark. Neither did the Complainant provide strong evidence of having common law, or unregistered, trademark rights. The Complainant’s evidence in this respect comprised of three pages from its own website, and a small number of articles with incidental references to it, or containing (among others) short quotes of the “CEO of ad network Collective Media”. Those articles were dated between January and March 2008. The evidence from its own website appears to have been obtained in April 2008. The Complainant provided no evidence to support its claim of having unregistered trademark rights in 2005, let alone in 2002 when the disputed domain name was registered.
The Panel therefore finds that the Complainant should have appreciated that its Complaint could not succeed and, as such, was brought in bad faith for the purpose of paragraph 15(e) of the Rules.
Congratulations to Ari Goldberger who represented the Respondent.
Technorati Tags: domain name, trademark, bad faith, cybersquatting
It surprises many domain name dispute lawyers that some domainers still purchase domains which are so trademark protected that is is hard to imagine how they might avoid an adverse UDRP transfer. Some domainers simply don't understand trademark law or the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.
Toyota.Me Sell for 90K: Why Shouldn’t a Registry Be Liable for Profiting From the Sale of Trademark Infringing Domains?
The .ME registry just sold toyota.me for the whopping price of $90,025.
Not only is it the highest price ever paid for a .me it is agoing to be a litigation nightmare for the new owner.
It is hard to imagine how this registrant, assuming the registrant is not related to Toyota Motors, is going to avoid losing this domain and their $90,000 investment under the UDRP or ACPA litigation. While many words and names have multiple uses, some of which are non-infringing uses udner trademark law, Toyota is not one of them.
The following news story has been posted without confirmation. Even so, how long will it be before Google and Yahoo eliminate certain domains from its network in order to get click fraud under control. At the recent T.R.A.F.F.I.C Conference in Orlando, a Google executive made an appearance and warned domainers that Google was going ot be taking more aggressive action against click fraud. The suggestion is that some domainers create clicks, through software programs or human schemes, on the ads on their parked pages in order to fraudulently create adword revenue. Of course, advertisers using the Google adwords program are getting better at auditing click fraud and asking for refunds from Google.
Google Parking Changes Approaching « Is it me or is everyone else stupid? From a reliable source Im told that Google has had enough of domain parking, though not all elements of it it seems. [the recent class action filing by Boston attorney Hal Levitte not being relevant at this point]. Google apparently have gotten fed up of policing their AFD program and are about to become proactive with a new domain parking algorithm.
This new algo will assess all domains calling their parking feed and immediately give domains either a “pass” or a “fail” score. Meaning that if Google decide your domain has little chance of type-in traffic or if it scores low on conversions, it wont serve you a parking feed. Simple as that. The details on what percentage of parked domains this will negatively affect is sketchy at best, but you can bet your bottom dollar the numbers will be significant.
A follow up post reporting that "over 90% of the high earning parked domains (those earning above $1k per month) are typos of another site or of a TM holder’s site" and "Only 10% of the high earning parked domains are truly generic."
Technorati Tags: domain parking, google, click fraud
Eric Goldman at the Technology & Marketing Law Blog has a post about the recent ACPA injunction entered against Navigation Catalyst and registrar Basic Fusion. Mr. Golman states that this is the first decisions against a "domainer" which of course raises the issue of definition. What is a domainer?
Technology & Marketing Law Blog: Domainer Loses Cybersquatting Lawsuit--Verizon v. Navigation Catalyst
This is an extremely interesting and potentially precedent-setting case regarding domaining and domain name tasting. The court condemns both practices, leading to a preliminary injunction against the domainer and its registrar based on the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). As far as I can recall, this is the first time that a domainer has lost an ACPA lawsuit in court, and it provides an important data point confirming that domaining can be cybersquatting (a previously unresolved issue). I also believe that this is the first time a domain name registrar has lost an ACPA lawsuit. Although the court wasn't asked to assess damages (it was just an injunction request), it's clear from the strongly worded opinion that Verizon will get paid if the case gets that far. As a result, this is a major loss for domainers and might very well force them to change their practices.
The defendants are Navigation Catalyst, a domainer, and Basic Fusion, its registrar. Navigation Catalyst engaged in some common domainer practices, including:
* high volume automated domain name tasting. Many of the registered domains have nothing to do with anyone's trademark, but some were typographical error versions of Verizon's trademarks (allegedly, nearly 1400 were variations of Verizon's trademarks)
* trademark "scrubbing" of domain names during the tasting period (both an automated blacklist and a manual review)
* disabling ads on any challenged domains and offering to transfer those domain names to the trademark owner. All of the attributes above might be indicia of cybersquatting, but do not describe a domainer. A domainer is someone who registers generic, descriptive or even arbitrary words, to the extent they are not trademark protected, for resale, development or advertising revenue. A cybersquatter is someone who registers trademark protected domains to divert traffic from trademark holders. Most legitimate domainers I know consider Navigation Catalyst to be a black hat cybersquatting company. Technorati Tags: cybersquatting, verizon, navigation catalyst, ACPA, Domain disputes
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