Renew your domain name!
Laptop Battery By Deborah Wilcox • 04/03/06
If you fail to renew your domain name, you agree that Go Daddy may, at its sole discretion, renew your expired domain name on your behalf.
Thinkpad For the past few years, many companies have been downsizing
their domain name portfolios in the belief that the domain name
speculation market had cooled. There has not been, however, a
corresponding decrease in domain disputes. Last year saw a 20%
increase in the number of domain name cases filed with the World
Intellectual Property Organization.
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Microsoft The domain name market has been reinvigorated due to the
development of new and abundant revenue sources for cybersquatters,
and large corporations
backed by venture capital are
getting in on the act. Companies must now re-examine their
domain name portfolio strategies in light of this novel
environment.
IP, you must specify the IP address that the FastLynx server is listening on. You can also specify the computer name or domain name of the server computer if the client computer knows that name. If the name is not known, you will see a Ìost not found error message, which means that the actual IP address must be supplied. If the server has changed the default port number (2689),
Laptop Computers Drop catching
When You register a domain name, You have the option to elect that the domain name be automatically renewed upon reaching the expiration date.
Laptop Computer Today's cybersquatters focus intently on "drop catching" being
the first to register domain names that are released back into the
pool of available domain names when registrants fail to pay the
renewal fees.
When you fire up your favorite web browser and type in the domain name of a website you want to view, the first thing that happens is that a request is sent to the server that is hosting that website. This server is found via the Domain Name Server (DNS) system, which associates the domain name (which we humans understand) and the address of the server that is hosting that website (which the computers understand). Once that request is received by the server, it looks at the files of the website to determine what happens next.
Desktop Computer When those domain names correspond to trademarks, danger lurks.
There are several companies who facilitate this by allowing domain
"investors" to back order desirable domains years before they
expire. Once a domain name drops from registered status, the domain
is awarded to whomever has back-ordered it (if there is only one)
or auctioned off to the highest bidder. This process assures that
almost every domain name that was once registered will be picked up
by an investor if it is allowed to expire. However, the danger does
not stop there.
Notebooks Domain monetization
Lenovo This new breed of investors in Internet domain names is reaping
fantastic profits by virtue of two web trends: direct navigation
and pay-per-click advertising. Articles published in
The Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0, and
Maclean's within the past few months discussed the revision
of the business model used by domain name buyers. Rather than
passively holding a registration in the hopes of receiving a
lucrative offer for the name sometime in the future, domain
registrants sow their digital fields with ads, thereby ensuring a
daily harvest for the here and now.
Hard Drive The value of a particular domain name often is a function of the
amount of type-in traffic it receives, i.e., the number of Internet
users who bypass a search engine by entering the term directly in
the URL field of their browser.
Travelstar For example, those interested in opening a checking account
might type "checkingaccount.com" into their web browser. Today, the
user is very likely to be served up a "portal" site. The site
contains "sponsored results" that are advertisement links for which
the advertiser has agreed to pay a fixed amount each time the ads
are clicked on by an Internet user. To compel viewers to click
through portals expeditiously, the sites are made purposefully
ugly.
Gateway "Sponsored results" can be a random selection of advertisements,
but increasingly, they specifically target the users most likely to
key in the domain name. The speculators hope to build off the
traffic that the prior registrant had established under the domain
name. This targeting of content and ads dramatically increases the
chance that an Internet user will click on the ads.
Laptop Parts Although the revenue from each click is often only a few cents,
or a fraction of a cent, the aggregate profit from thousands of
these portal sites can be substantial. Yun Ye, a legendary pioneer
of pay-per-click exploitation, amassed a portfolio of 100,000
domain names that earned him around $19 million per year before he
sold it for $164 million in 2004.
Software "Dictionary" words
Hard Drives While the hosts of portal sites claim to target generic,
dictionary terms in building their domain portfolios, the vast
majority of trademarks are also words that can be found in the di
tionary. This means that the many domains registered by investors
will be capable of some kind of trademark meaning.
Electronics While some domain investors may have a solid "generic use"
defense, there are many who register domain names in bad faith,
i.e., with the intent to wrongly profit from the goodwill
associated with its trademark meaning. When the owner of a domain
name that is both a trademark and a dictionary word has registered
the name in bad faith, this is often evident from the fact that the
particular combination of registered "dictionary terms" has no
meaning other than as a trademark.
Canon The investor's bad faith can also be evident from the types of
advertisements and other content appearing at the monetized site:
these sites will often display prominently or even
exclusivelypictures, substantive content and advertisements
relating to the specific goods and services to which the trademark
is applied. These advertisements are often for the trademark
owner's competitors.
Desktop Pc Conclusion
Desktop Computers Many domain registrations are lost when the prior registrant
accidently fails to pay the renewal fee, or when registrants
deliberately allow seemingly superfluous registrations to lapse,
such as domains embodying common misspellings of their
trademark.
Think Pad In addition to proactively registering at-risk domain names,
trademark owners need to take active measures to guard the domain
names that they already control. If they do not, someone else will
register them and will likely use them to trade off the goodwill of
the trademark and advertise goods and services competitive to the
trademark owners' business.
Repair Highlights:
Data Recovery Many companies mistakenly believe they are out of the
woods as far as cybersquatting
is concerned.
Cisco In actuality, domain name registration is becoming big business,
and disputes are on the rise.
Keyboard Drop catching is no longer a mere cottage
industry.
Monitor Direct navigation and pay-per-click
advertising have revolutionized the
way domainers do business.
Desktop If a company is not vigilantly protecting its brand on the
Internet, others are likely exploiting it.
Infosys Deborah A. Wilcox is a lawyer and co-chair of intellectual
property litigation at Baker and Hostetler, LLP, in Cleveland. She
is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and
regularly handles copyright, trademark and e-commerce litigation.
She can be reached at dwilcox@bakerlaw.com.
The opinions expressed herein or statements made in the above
column are solely those of the author, & do not necessarily
reflect the
views of Wisconsin Technology
Network, LLC. (WTN). WTN, LLC accepts no legal liability or
responsibility for any claims made or opinions expressed
herein.
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