Cathie Jung may have the world’s smallest waist, but that didn’t stop her from filing a court lawsuit over the domain CathieJung.com. Jung, who has worn a corset every day for the last 12 years, wanted to transfer the name’s ownership away from a corset company. The owner was using it to redirect visitors to his site.

Naturally, she won. Hopefully this lawsuit didn’t cause her too much stress, because her waist is already a tiny 15 inches. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, that’s about the size of a mayonnaise jar.

Source | Domain Name Wire
Photo | Flickr

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In the United States, domain extensions cannot be registered as trademarks. That hasn’t stopped some gTLD applicants in other countries in order to gain an upper hand over competitors, however. One notable example is Constantine Roussos, who has filed some 20 trademarks in hopes of preventing anyone else but him from applying for the .music gTLD:

Rest assured that if we, as .MUSIC are faced with the possibility of being gamed and abused in a manner that we find illegal, we will use our trademarks and other means necessary to do what we have to do to protect ourselves and our respective community.

People like Roussos think are they entitled to own a gTLD simply because they thought of it first. As far as I’m concerned, everyone should have an equal chance to operate any extension. If someone can do a better job of running .music than Roussos, let the guy have it.

Photo | Flickr

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Paris Hilton, a celebrity and heiress to the Hilton fortune, has filed a dispute with the WIPO over the domain paris-hilton-perfume.net. She contends that the domain violates the “Paris Hilton” trademark.

This dispute was more than likely filed by one of Paris Hilton’s legal representatives. This is a good thing, as the star has often been a subject of ridicule for her lack of intelligence. The name is owned by Troy Rushton, who registered it on March 31, 2010. I don’t think he has much of a case to defend his use of the name and the registrant will probably lose the dispute.

On a side note, Hilton was briefly detained at a Corsica airport this weekend for possession of cannabis.

Photo | Flickr

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It’s always great when sites launches new features. Of course, this might not be the case with a site like ChatRoulette. The company announced this week the launch of new ChannelRoulette and LocalRoulette sub-channels. Unfortunately, it forgot to register the relevant domains.

Two domainers registered ChannelRoulette.com and LocalRoulette.com several months ago before the ChatRoulette announcement. Maybe the company didn’t want to pay the asking price for these names? ChatRoulette is going to lose a lot of traffic without them.

Another potential loss of traffic is the creation of subdomains on the site. Users can now access the site regionally using geographic subdomains, such as london.chatroulette.com. Clever typosquatters are sure to get a hold of typos like londonchatroulette.com.

Photo | Flickr

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded Microsoft a patent today for an investigative tool called “Cybersquatter Patrol.” The tool is designed to generate lists of typosquatting and cybersquatting domains, then figure out who owns them and how the domains generate revenue.

This isn’t the company’s first foray into the anti-cybersquatting world. It released an add-on for Internet Explorer in 2005 called Typo-Patrol that blocks domain typos.

According to Microsoft, some 40% to 70% of typo domains are parked with six top domain parking services. Going after thousands of domain owners to enforce a trademark is very difficult, but going after a handful of advertising companies isn’t. Some day, the domain parking services will likely feel Microsoft’s building wrath.

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Blogspot.com, a Google-owned blog hosting service, is one of the most-visited websites on the Internet. According to domain blogger Elliot Silver, Yahoo is taking advantage of this by typosquatting with a very similar domain: Blogsport.com.

Right now the domain doesn’t point anywhere. In fact, Yahoo’s owning of a popular typo for a Google domain is a bit of a coincidence. Blogsport.com was owned by sports site Rivals.com. But when Yahoo bought Rivals, it also bought all of its assets, including the domain.

Yahoo will probably never monetize the domain or redirect it to a rival service because it does not want to face legal action from Google.

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For years Hollywood has put pressure on the American and Swedish governments to put a stop to that pesky little Pirate Bay bittorrent site. Despite a government raid, large fines and jail time, the site is more popular than ever. But according to TorrentFreak, the United States government planned an operation in coordination with ICANN to seize thepiratebay.org.

As part of a campaign called ‘Operation In Our Sites,’ the government has already illegally seized the domains of nine movie streaming sites. According to an insider source at TorrentFreak, ICANN took control of the domains and then handed them to the government– in clear violation of domain owner rights.

The government was poised to seize The Pirate Bay’s domain as well as MegaUpload.com, but changed its mind at the last minute for some unknown reason. This does not mean these sites are safe, however. As Professor Pouwelse of the Delft University of Technology put it, “Hollywood lawyers have discovered the soft underbelly of piracy.”

ICANN has declined to comment on the matter.

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In a huge victory for Verizon, the company has won a dispute it filed with the National Arbitration Forum over the domain VerizonWireless.com. The company markets itself as “Verizon Wireless,” so having this name is very valuable.

This case is interesting because the arbitration panel ruled that the domain was being used in bad faith because it had no content. The respondent (domain owner) also failed to respond to the complaint.

Respondent is not making an active use of the domain name as the disputed domain name resolves to a website displaying only a “Network Error” message and no original content. The Panel finds that Respondent’s failure to actively use the disputed domain name indicates bad faith registration and use .

It wouldn’t surpise me if the arbitration panel was biased towards Verizon to begin with. People reserve domains all the time without adding the content to them. Of course, one could also argue that is more fair for Verizon to have the name because it actually plans on using it.

Photo | Flickr

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Charter Communications, an American ISP and cable company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009, lost an arbitration dispute this week over the name charterbusiness.com.

Charter claimed the domain violated a number of its trademarks and alleged that the owner was using it in bad faith because. The name at one point contained a parked page with a few Charter-related links.

The firm failed to include in its original dispute filing that it had a trademark on “Charter Business Networks,” however. Though it included this information later on, the arbitration panel did not take it into consideration.

Because Charter made such a poor case, it lost the dispute. The panel did not believe sufficient evidence existed for a bad faith ruling.

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Usually big companies win domain disputes. In this instance, however, French publisher Editions Milan tried to abuse the WIPO domain arbitration system and ended up screwing itself over in the process.

It all started when American soldier Steve Hill registered kokeshi.com in 2001. He registered the single-keyword domain because of his interest in Japanese kokeshi dolls. In 2009, Editions Milan began publishing a series of children’s books called ‘Kokeshi.’

You can probably see by now where this is going. The French company wanted the domain. Although it does own the trademark to ‘Kokeshi,’ the mark only applies to books and CDs. After Hill refused the company’s $1,500 offer to buy the name, the publisher filed a dispute with the WIPO.

Pointing out that the firm’s trademark did not extend to his doll-related domain and that the company cannot monopolize generic words, the WIPO ruled in favor of the American serviceman. Adding insult to injury, the arbitrator declared the company guilty of reverse domain hijacking for its abusive behavior.

It’s always nice to see the little guy win. You can read the full case documents here.

Source | DN Journal
Photo | Flickr

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