Judge rules WHOIS privacy constitutes “material falsification”

Recently there has been heated debate about whether or not WHOIS privacy protection, an inexpensive service that lets domain registrants hide their contact information from the public, should be allowed.

In the recent case U.S. v Kilbride, an American judge ruled that using privacy protection constitutes “material falsification.” The defendant was on trial for spamming.

The ruling does not make the use of domain privacy protection illegal. Rather, the judge believed the spammer on trial was using it as a means to evade the authorities.

Keep in mind that privacy protection services will reveal your contact information if presented with a valid subpoena. This can often be a problem for law enforcement officials, however, as the document can sometimes take weeks or months to obtain. Then again, there is nothing stopping an individual from faking contact information from the get-go.

Photo | Flickr

Court: Acceptable for host to terminate rude customer

In a ruling issued last week, a Los Angeles court ruled that a web host did not breach contract by suspending a rude customer.

The individual in question became angry after his hosting account was suspended for nonpayment. After leaving a rude voicemail at the company’s headquarters, the web host terminated his account. He then filed a lawsuit against the firm for breach of contract.

As it turns out, the customer promised “not to abuse whether verbally or physically or whether in person, via email or telephone or otherwise … any employee or contractor of [defendant],” when he agreed to the host’s terms of service at sign-up.

I guess it pays to be nice.

Source | Internet Cases

CorporateLawyer.com nets $20,766 at auction

Law-related domains are some of the most valuable out there, so it’s no surprise that CorporateLawyer.com just sold for $20,766 USD, or £12,797. No information about the buyer has been released, though the domain would be very useful to an end user.

Other recent sales include:

• supervisors.com- $7100
• appreciate.com- $5,044
• candycompany.com- $2,360
• cardiogram.com- $1,600

Candycompany.com had previously sold for $6,800, but the auction did not work out and the domain was relisted. Considering that Candy.com sold this year for £1.8 million ($3 million USD), I’m surprised Candycompany didn’t sell for more.

Source | The Domains
Photo | plex

Cybersquatter ordered to pay $33 million to Verizon

Cybersquatting isn’t cheap these days. This week, a federal court upheld a $33 million (£20.3 million) ruling against OnlineNIC, a wholesale domain company, for cybersquatting the Verizon.com domain and trademarks.

OnlineNIC reportedly used an automated system to register some 663 names confusingly similar to Verizon.com, such as iphoneverizonplans.com, accountverizonwireless.com, and verizononline.com.

The domains earned revenue by displaying advertisements to visitors. The company claims to have only earned $1,468 from the names, however, and argued that the penalty is disproportionate to the revenue earned. This did not sway United States District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who stated:

OnlineNIC’s reference to its alleged profit fails to take any account of the damages suffered by Verizon in the form of a likelihood of confusion surrounding Verizon’s marks and the diversion of internet traffic to websites selling rival products. Moreover, OnlineNIC has made multiple false or misleadingly incomplete representations to Verizon and the Court over the course of this litigation, making it exceedingly difficult to accept OnlineNIC’s present representations as credible.

While it’s possible quite a bit more than $1,468 was earned from the domains, something tells me it wasn’t anything close to $33 million. Verizon may have suffered somewhat from the incident, but I doubt it lost very much in traffic or sales.

Source | The Register
Photo | Flickr

Federal court rejects Hotels.com appeal

The website owners of Hotels.com have been trying to get trademark status for the domain name for over year, but Friday The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the ruling of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. According to the court, the term “hotels” is too generic to be a trademark. Hotels.com argued that adding the top-level domain .com to it made it their brand. The court disagreed.

Last year Hotels.com conducted a study in which 76% of 277 respondents to their survey associated Hotels.com with their specific brand, but the courts were not swayed. The study, they said, was flawed in not fully making a distinction between a domain name and a brand.

Hotels.com is worried that they would have difficulty suing competitors who use “hotels.com” in Google ads and other search engines to draw traffic to their own sites. It also sets a precedence for other potential generic domains that companies might want to use as trademarks. It could potentially create a web of problems. Because the trademark would be Hotels.com, would the company have the right to dispute Hotels.cm for example? These questions would undoubtedly raise more court cases.

Source: MediaPost
Photo: Flickr