Author name: fairwindsp

WASHINGTON (July 15) — FairWinds Partners, the world’s leading domain name strategy consultancy, has completed the migration of its website from fairwindspartners.com to home.fairwinds. “This transition is more than a domain change. It reflects our belief in the future of .BRAND top-level domains,” said FairWinds founder Josh Bourne. “Our move to .FAIRWINDS reinforces the strategic […]

By Steve Levy We often see UDRP decisions published online, laying out the details of who did what and why. But what happens when the named Respondent in a case isn’t actually the bad actor? This is where things can get a little complicated and it brings up a question: should the named respondent’s identity

By Steve Levy If you own a trademark, you’re already familiar with the topic of cybersquatting — the practice where someone registers a domain name similar to your brand, often to mislead customers or profit unfairly from source confusion. The main legal tool to stop cybersquatting is an arbitration process called the Uniform Dispute Resolution

By Steve Levy For those who may be learning about this for the first time, or just want a quick refresher, the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) is a specialized arbitration process created by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to resolve disputes over domain names more quickly and at lower cost

By Steve Levy Those who are familiar with the UDRP know that par. 4(a)(i) requires a brand owner to prove that a disputed “domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights”. It’s important to note that this latter portion is not the same as

By Steve Levy A defense to a UDRP complaint, under par. 4(a)(ii), is for a domain name owner to prove that it has rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name. One of the specified ways to do this is mentioned in par. 4(c)(iii) which says that rights or legitimate interests can be shown

By Steve Levy As with general trademark law, the concept of fair use is incorporated into the UDRP in paragraph 4(c)(iii) which says that a domain name owner has rights or legitimate interests in a disputed domain name if it can show that it is “making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain

By Steve Levy I just decided a case that involved the combination of a typosquatted domain name and a separate email hacking incident. While this may be the first of its kind to hit the UDRP, this sort of scam has been around since at least 2021 and perhaps longer. Here’s the setup. The Complainant, a law

By Steve Levy Does your company have a website and social media posts? Of course, it does. Do you own the copyrights in that content? Of course, you do (or you certainly should through work-for-hire agreements with independent contractors). These assets can be of immense value when going after online copycats, scams, and even cybersquatting

By Steve Levy I only started handling UDRP cases after a couple of decades of dealing with other trademark disputes through a combination of demand letters and litigation. Like many brand enforcement lawyers, I would sometimes use the threat of litigation as leverage when trying to nudge the opposing party towards a settlement of the

By Steve Levy On June 3, 2024, I wrote a piece titled Falsified Evidence In The Age Of AI. Well, it’s happened again. Only this time, the forger is a Complainant asserting trademark rights. The disputed domain name is lemeilleur.com and Complainant claimed ownership of a US trademark registration for LE MEILLEUR, Serial Number 98864499, with a registration date

By Steve Levy The reality of the UDRP is that nearly 90% of cases involve no-show Respondents (a “default” case). This is for a number of reasons, the most prevalent of which is that most cases involve abusive domain names and cybersquatters usually consider UDRP losses to be a routine part of their business model.