As part of a collaboration between EUIPO (the EU Intellectual Property Office) and EURid (the .EU and .ЕЮ Registry), a new service has been launched that allows EUTM (European trade mark) applicants and rights holders to opt-in to receive alerts as soon as a .EU or .ЕЮ domain name identical to their application has been
Cindy Mikul
EURid and EUIPO ramp up the fight against cybersquatting
Steady growth for domain names in 2018
At the end of 2018, Verisign, the authoritative Registry for all .COM, .NET, .NAME, .CC, .TV, .EDU, .GOV and .JOBS domain names, published its third quarter report for 2018. According to the report, at the end of September there were approximately 342.4 million domain name registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), which represented an
U.S. – Over a million sites ICEd this year
In its traditional Cyber Monday announcement, the U.S. government’s National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center), a body managed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit, revealed that over a million websites had been seized this year as part of Operation In Our Sites. Each year, the NIPRCC
Domain names: Seven “dirty words” now acceptable in .US
The Registry operator of the .US domain and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) have lifted a prohibition on the so called “seven dirty words” allowing them to be included in future .US domain name registrations. The decision came in the wake of the suspension of an anti-Nazi domain name containing a previously banned
U.S. Domain Names: Stand and deliver…your domain name!
Domain name theft (or hijacking) is not a new phenomenon and in fact is a lot more common than most people realise; hence the need to take adequate security precautions in relation to email and domain name registrar accounts. Nevertheless, most domain name thefts are carried out virtually and thus peaceably, by hacking into the
GDPR touches DN transfers: Changes to inter-registrar transfer procedure call for extra vigilance
As a result of the obscuring of the WHOIS details for many registrants’ domain name records that has come in the wake of the entry into force of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on 25 May 2018, the inter-registrar domain name transfer procedure for domain names regulated by ICANN (primarily gTLDs) is having
dotFM embraces emoji domain names
dotFM, the Registry responsible for the .FM Top Level Domain (TLD), is to join the handful of TLDs that are making emoji domain names available to register. The Registry, which is the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) for Micronesia but which, in view of its .FM extension, has up to now mainly marketed its
Sites get ICEd in transatlantic assault on cyber crooks
As part of a sustained and coordinated effort, law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have rounded off their on-going fight against cybercrime known as “Operation In Our Sites” with the traditional annual flourish on “Cyber Monday”. In the U.S., and increasingly elsewhere, the Monday following “Black Friday” (the first Friday after Thanksgiving),
$10 domain name halts spread of WannaCry ransomware
A major global ransomware attack going by the name of WannaCry was recently short circuited by the registration of a single domain name costing just over $10. The unregistered domain name consisting of random characters was apparently programmed into the WannaCry malware by its creators in order to function as a “kill switch” and was
ICANN sticks two characters up for countries
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released a document called “Proposed Measures for Letter/Letter Two-Character ASCII Labels to Avoid Confusion with Corresponding Country Codes”. Under the measures proposed in this document, governments and independent country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) operators would be given the first option on a list of
ICANN sets course for change of Internet stewardship
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) took another step towards a tectonic shift in Internet governance at its 55th meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, in March. Extensive discussions with the global Internet community spanning a period of two years culminated at the meeting in a plan under which the U.S. government will pass
UK: Nominet gets tough on cybercrime
Nominet recently released an annual report that, on the one hand, shows a decrease in the number of suspensions of domain names containing banned words and on the other hand, an increase in the number of take downs due to criminal activity such as intellectual property infringement and fraud. Nominet implemented its policy concerning offensive names
The dragon rises… but mainly in the officially-approved TLDs
China’s country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), .CN, has recently edged ahead of Germany’s .DE to become the second most registered TLD in the world, whilst other Chinese-run (and Chinese government approved) TLDs, such as .TOP and .WANG are seeing explosive growth. Brand owners should thus be vigilant and ensure that their brands are protected