TheNextWeb.com reported that a U.S. court has ruled that scraping data from a public website without permission is not illegal. This is going to prove to be a very interesting case on appeal as it could set a very interesting precedent. From the article: An appeals court situated in California, US, today said it’s not illegal to scrape data from public websites without any prior … [Read more...]
Appear.in to rebrand to whereby.com
Appear.in is a business application that allows you to share video meetings, screen share and video conferences. Appear.in will be changing it's name to Whereby.com. Why did we have to change the name? We had a long-standing trademark dispute over the appear․in name that resulted in no longer being able to use it. The old name has served us and our millions of users very well over the … [Read more...]
TopChef.com is it a UDRP waiting to happen?
TopChef.com dropped and was caught by DropCatch, the auction is already at $4,150. Now most people know the Top Chef brand as a tv show on Bravo. Bravo and others have many live trademarks on the term "Top Chef" These range from entertainment services, caps, aprons and hats, video discs and many more categories. The domain name was registered in 2003 and looks to have had one … [Read more...]
JetBlue suing WalMart over JetBlack
Usually it's a big company going after the little guy but in this TM dispute it's JetBlue going against JetBlack. FashionLaw wrote on the dispute between JetBlue and the new ecommerce venture from Walmart. Jetblue versus Jetblack: those are the two terms at the center of a new lawsuit between JetBlue Airways Corp. and Walmart. The Long Island City, New York-headquartered airline claims … [Read more...]
What it costs to file a UDRP
Many times someone on a forum or blog comment will ask, "How much does a UDRP cost?" Doug Isenberg wrote a great little checklist article to give you all the info you need. Doug gives a breakdown of the fees charged by the four providers — the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Forum (formerly the National Arbitration Forum), the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC), and the Asian … [Read more...]
Making a fortune squatting domains on the Dark Web?
Typosquatting on corporate names is not the only squatting game in town. TheNextWeb has a story about someone claiming to have made $760,000 in BTC by squatting on websites that reside on the Tor network. From the article: A scammer is claiming to have made 200 BTC ($760,000) through ‘typosquatting’ criminal dark web sites on the Tor network, over the past four years. The scammer says 800 … [Read more...]
Francois Carrillo looks to have retained ADO.com
A little less than 1 year ago, Francois Carrillo of Domaining.com, lost ADO.com in a UDRP. Many wrote about the decision from DNW, to Gerald Levine and I wrote a piece here as well that looked at a deeper potential problem with logos. It seems like Francois successfully settled out of court and has now retained ADO.com. TRTL.com broke down the whole timeline and it looks like Francois … [Read more...]
