Designer threatens person with last name LaCoste.

Famous designer Lacoste Alligator S.A. has threatened a Massachusetts woman over her company name and domain name, which happens to be the woman’s last name: LaCoste.

In October 2008 the designer sent a cease and desist letter to Audrey LaCoste, demanding that she cease using the domain names LaCosteHealingJewelry.com and LaCostJewelry.com for her business. Perhaps scared of the lawyer’s harsh language and threats of legal action, she agreed to change her company’s name from LaCoste Healing Jewelry to Sterling Identity.

But that wasn’t enough. Lacoste Alligator S.A. demanded that she hand over the domain names. She let the first one expire, and took down the web site at LaCosteJewelry.com. She told Lacoste Alligator that she didn’t see why should transfer the domain name since she wasn’t even using it. That resulted in Lacoste filing an arbitration complaint with WIPO.

Audrey LaCoste did not respond to the complaint at WIPO, but she still won the dispute. The arbitrator wrote:

Words corresponding to trademarks may be capable of innocent usage on the Internet, particularly since domain names are devoid of logos, punctuation, capitalisation, special colours or other associations possible in ordinary print. The word “lacoste” is a recognised surname and a French place name. The word is capable of innocent usage by, at the very least, people named “LaCoste” (or “Lacoste”) and by businesses, associations, societies, utilities and other entities associated with the place. Unless a domain name containing the component “lacoste” has been registered and used with abusive intent against a trademark holder, there may not be grounds for complaint.

Editorial says internet governance should stay as it is.

I’ve long argued that the current ICANN set-up — with some oversight from the United States government — is ideal. I have some grievances about how ICANN is unaccountable to anything except itself, but believe there shouldn’t be a “United Nations” governing it.

Of course, many people and governments outside the United States think they should have a hand in how the internet’s naming system is run. And they do. The governmental constituency of ICANN, called Governmental Advisory Committee, is symbolic of what to expect out of any “U.N. for domains”. Basically the only contribution they’ve made recently is to argue that they should have rights to any top level or second level domain name of their country or region.

But my main worry is that authoritarian, non-democratic countries would stifle free speech.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, former WSJ publisher L. Gordon Crovitz argues that the current model of internet governance is the best option.

One of the marvels of the Internet is that it is self-governing, with private groups of engineers and technology companies doing their best to keep it up and running without political interference. Many countries around the world censor how their citizens access the Web, but governance of the Internet itself has been left to technologists and their largely libertarian instincts. This happy state of affairs could be close to an end.

Crovitz suggests that new top level domain names could push governments to get more involved and try to exert influence on internet naming:

This will make the Web more accessible to non-English-speakers but also will lead to tricky issues, such as whether dissidents in China or Iran will be permitted to have their own dot-addresses. How would Beijing respond to a Chinese-language domain that translates into .democracy or .limitedgovernment, perhaps hosted by computers in Taipei or Vancouver?

This prospect could explain why Beijing recently had a top bureaucrat engage with Icann for the first time since 2001. Governments tend to be less concerned when only their better-educated, more English-fluent citizens have access to information.

I frequently hear from people who say the U.S. exerts too much power, has a ridiculous legal system, and is hardly the place for ICANN to be based. But at the end of the day there’s a reason the U.S. thrives, and there’s a reason ICANN should work under the gentle hand of the U.S. government.

Domain would be one of the most expensive .cc domain names ever sold.

Long before .me, .tv, and .ws were commercialized, the big rage of country code domain names was .cc. .CC is the country code domain for the Cocos islands, an Australian territory.

A bidder on Sedo has placed a bid at $10,000 for Live.cc, which may be the largest amount ever paid for a .cc domain, save for a publicity stunt in 2000.

NameBio shows three other sales of .cc domains over $5,000: Poker.cc for $6,802, and Ringtones.cc and Co.cc for $5,00 each.

Back in 2000, before the dotcom bubble burst, there was a wave of interest in the country code after GreatDomains supposedly brokered the sale of Beauty.cc for $1,000,000. People were in disbelief, and had every reason to be. (This was many years before Sedo bought GreatDomains.)

As it turns out, the deal was $200,000 cash plus $800,000 in stock at a generous valuation, reported L.A. Weekly. And even at that, the buyer and seller had a pre-existing business and ownership relationship, which made the deal seem like one big publicity stunt to put some hot air in .cc.

573,000 credit and debit accounts compromised.

Network Solutions’ web servers have been hacked, resulting in 573,000 compromised credit and debit accounts, writes Brian Krebs of Washington Post.

The exposed data isn’t that of domain registration customers, but instead financial accounts of people who purchased something from a web site hosted with Network Solutions e-commerce package. In other words, it’s mostly customers of mom-and-pop stores on the web.

Network Solutions has offered to contact customers of each store on their behalf.

Since security is the number one priority of any e-commerce offering, this is sure to be a major blow to the domain registrar and hosting company. However, it’s likely more painful to the small online businesses who may have lost the trust of their customers.

Court rules Hotels.com can’t be trademarked.

A federal appeals court has ruled against Hotels.com in its bid to trademark its name. The court ruled that “Hotels” is generic and descriptive of its business.

Here’s what it means for domain name owners:

1. Generic domain names are harder to trademark and thus harder to protect. For example, Candy.com would likely not be able to get a trademark. However, the use of a generic term not related to the principle product on the web site (e.g. Amazon.com) can still be trademarked.

2. It may be harder for Hotels.com and other generic domain owners to win under anti-cybersquatting and UDRP for typos, although UDRP panels are fairly liberal about assuming common law trademarks even when a federal government has rejected a trademark application.

3. Filing a trademark for one your domain names as a preemptive measure may become more difficult.

MediaPost points out that it would be easier for other companies to bid on Google Adwords for your domain name, too.

It’s important to stress that the problem here is that Hotels.com is all about hotels, meaning Hotels.com was merely descriptive. This doesn’t mean that other domain names can’t be trademarked.