Over the last few months as you know Homeland Security, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been seizing domains that they claim were either selling fake or knockoff goods, or engaged in the transmission of copyrighted material (including the 84,000 innocent domains that were returned). Yesterday ICE announced the first arrest. Bryan McCarthy 32 from Texas, was … [Read more...]
China Company: Apple Is Infringing On iPad Trademark & It’s Good Should Be Seized
According to Mondaq.com, a Chinese company, Proview Technology Co., Ltd says that Apple is infringing on the name "ipad". The company has demanded that Apple to stop its trademark infringement immediately, otherwise it would work with 8 creditor banks including Bank of China to ask relevant authorities to seize Apple's infringing goods. Proview International claims it registered a … [Read more...]
Chairman Of The IP Committee of the U.S. House Comes Out Swinging Against Leahy Bill
Over the weekend there was some good news out of Washington when Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va said about the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act: “We don’t want to be Egypt,” “Nor do we, when you talk about cybersecurity, a broader issue that goes beyond theft, that goes to the functioning of the internet itself, we don’t want to give government so much power that they have a … [Read more...]
Maybe I Was Right & Those Government Domain Seizures Weren’t Such A Good Idea After All
The news is full of stories the last couple of days on how during the the last domain seizure "raid" by Homeland Security 84,000 Innocent website wound up getting shut down. You can read some mainstream coverage on this issue here, here, and here. However on the domainer side of things I have to give credit to Dotweekly.com who was first to pick up on this story and find out about all of … [Read more...]
Microsoft Now To Allow Advertisers To Use Trademark Terms On Bing/Yahoo
According to a post on Microsoft's blog, "In a major change in policy, Microsoft has decided to allow marketers to use other companies' trademarks to trigger search ads." "To come in line with search industry practices, as of March 3rd, Microsoft will cease editorial investigations into complaints about trademarks used as keywords to trigger ads on Bing & Yahoo Search in the United … [Read more...]
WIPO To Enter The Domain Seizure/Take Down Business?
According to IPwatch.com WIPO maybe the newest player wanting to get into the ever expanding, actually quite rapidly expanding, business of Domain "take downs"and Domain Seizures. According to the article the World Intellectual Property Organization may create of an international “notice and takedown” system for alleged online trademark infringers." "This will be followed in a few months by … [Read more...]
The Senate Judiciary Hearing on Online Theft and Domain Seizure Turns On Google
A lot of attorneys spoke on Capital Hill yesterday on the Senate Judiciary hearing on Online Theft and Domain Seizure Bill. Counsels for Rosetta Stone, Verizon, Visa and Christine Jones from Godaddy were among those invited to speak. At issue is the bill proposed by Senator Leahy which would give the feds even more rights to seize domains (although ICE has been doing plenty of this without … [Read more...]