An Internet law lawyer can help you navigate the intricacies of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) on cybersquatting claims and defenses.
The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) is a statute passed by the United States Congress in 1998 providing special trademark protection to domain names. Most trademark infringement threat letters and lawsuits over domain name dispute issues involve claims of cybersquatting under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. Alternatively, many trademark infringement claims and threat letters dealing with domain names are resolved under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
If you are the victim of domain name trademark infringement or been wrongly accused of violating the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act as the result of your registration of a domain name with the same or similar third party trademark, you need to understand the law, your rights and legal defenses which will apply. An internet law lawyer who understands specialized statutes such as the ACPA and UDRP is critical in order for you to fully understand your risks and possible rewards by making or defending a legal claim of trademark infringement over a domain name. There are certain critical elements that must be established under the ACPA in order to establish not only a likelihood of confusion between the trademark and the domain name itself, but more importantly to prove that the domain name registrant registered the domain with a “bad faith intent to profit.” Inadvertent or accidental domain name registrations which happen to overlap a third party trademark rights typically don’t give rise to a legitimate legal claim of violating the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. While a domain registrant will inevitably deny that the registered, used or trafficked in the subject domain name in bad faith, your internet law attorney will be in the best position to research back-end databases, Whois archive history and any prior cybersquatting history of the domain name registrant in order to test veracity. Once you understand your strongest legal arguments under the ACPA, whether prosecuting an ACPA claim or defending an ACPA claim, you’ll be in a much better position to make an intelligent decision about how to proceed.
Our Internet law lawyers have extensive knowledge and expertise in the laws governing the use of the internet.
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