Verizon files four separate UDRP cases in past couple days.

For a while it seemed like Verizon had basically given up on filing UDRP cases. Instead, it opted to just file lawsuits against anyone with trademark typos, even small fry.

That may be changing. The company has filed four separate UDRP cases at World Intellectual Property Organization within the past two days.

One of those cases is for wwwverizon.com – a typo that should have been at the top of Verizon’s hit list from the beginning. It almost seems that the company has been using a shotgun approach going after typosquatters, leaving the highest trafficked domains out there. Compete.com says this typo gets over 6,000 uniques a month.

Why switch to UDRP instead of lawsuits? It may be that these specific typosquatters have been hard to track down. In the case of verizonewireless.com, the whois record is constantly changing. wwwverizon.com and verzonwireless.com are owned by people in Russia and Poland, respectively.

Or perhaps, after years of filing lawsuits, the company feels its determent efforts (lawsuits) have worked on everyone else they’ll work on. Now it’s time to use a cheaper method to get control of trademark typos.

Panel refuses to find in favor of complainant in case outside scope of policy.

UDRP was originally created to handle clear cut cases of cybersquatting. Since its launch panelists have stretched the scope of the policy.

But a three person panel has injected a breathe of fresh air in the decision of HRCIstudy.com. The domain owner registered the domain name for his business of providing tutoring courses for Human Resource Certification Institute exams. HRCI argued that this was cybersquatting and that it should get the domain name.

The panel found that the domain name was not registered and used in bad faith. The panel’s explanation of UDRP’s scope is clear:

The Policy was designed to deal with a relatively narrow form of dispute between trade mark (and service mark) proprietors and domain name registrants, namely the deliberate registration of a domain name featuring the complainant’s trade mark or a confusingly similar variant of it with a view to causing damage or disruption to the complainant or his business or unfairly exploiting the complainant’s trade mark for the registrant’s own advantage.

It followed up with an explanation of why this is not a clear-cut case of cybersquatting, and why then the complaint must fail:

Is the Respondent’s use of the Domain Name in violation of the Complainant’s service mark rights in a traditional trademark sense? The Panel cannot be certain. By reference to which country’s trade mark law is the question to be answered? One of the members of the Panel believes that in certain jurisdictions such a use of another’s service mark might be regarded as a fair descriptive use of the service mark to describe the educational services provided by the Respondent.

However, whether or not the Respondent’s use of the Domain Name constitutes trade mark/service mark infringement is outside the scope of this proceeding. For the purposes of the Policy, if the Respondent reasonably believed that what he was doing was legitimate, it cannot be said that his registration of the Domain Name was in bad faith.

If only other panels would take note.

Respondent says he met actor in 1999 – 28 years after the actor’s death.

When I first saw the domain name Texican.com was in dispute, I thought the domain owner would win. After all, there are plenty of companies and entities that use the name “Texican”, so why should one complainant get the domain unless it was clearly targeted (not that that hasn’t happened before). It’s also a generic slang term.

But in this case the respondent would have been better off not responding to the complaint because he made a crucial mistake that led the arbitrator to think he fabricated evidence. He said that he met the actor of the movie “The Texican” in 1999 and wanted to create a site dedicated to him. There’s just one problem: that actor died in 1971.

The panelist wrote:

This story appears to be fabricated because, as noted in the links about Audie Murphy that Respondent added to his site after the filing of the Complaint, the actor Audie Murphy died in a plane crash in 1971, twenty-eight years prior to when Respondent claims to have met him. Respondent’s claims thus lack credibility.

On the issue of registration in bad faith, the panelist noted that it was conceivable that the domain wasn’t registered with the complainant Texican Natural Gas Company in mind, but the respondent’s credibility was in question:

Respondent states that he had not heard of Complainant at the time that he registered the Domain Names in 1999, which might support an argument that Respondent did not register the Domain Names in bad faith (at least as to Complainant). However, given Respondent’s fabricated statement about meeting Audie Murphy in 1999, the Panel is concerned about the credibility of Respondent’s other assertions.

DOMAINfest sets preliminary agenda for Prague show and opens registration.

DOMAINfest has opened registration for its European show taking place Wednesday and Thursday, October 6 and 7, 2010, at the Hotel InterContinental in Prague, Czech Republic. The agenda looks very different from most of the company’s previous events, as the second day is dedicated to fun networking and social events.

Wednesday will include a number of session geared to the European audience including European ccTLD and IDN Opportunities and European Legal Issues Impacting Domain Investors. On Thursday there will be several social activities to choose from:

Thursday morning -
Guided Walking Tour and River
Spy Game
Grand Prix Go Kart Racing
Bobsled Racing
AK47 and M16 Shooting Contest

Thursday afternoon -
Prague Castle and Church Walking Tour
Grand Prix Go Kart
Pub Hunt Contest
AK47 and M16 Shooting Contest
Skoda Road Ralley

Early bird registration is $395 through July 1.

Gala celebrates big companies and players in the dot.com revolution.

Last night I had the honor of attending VeriSign’s “25 Years of .Com” gala at city hall in San Francisco. It was a fantastic event with a lot of the companies and people that made the internet what it is today in attendance.

After cocktails, comedian Dana Carvey took to the stage to warm up the crowd.

“Welcome. How many people have a net worth over $10 million? Don’t think, just raise your hand,” joked Carvey. He then pointed to another audience member. “Are you worth a billion dollars? You look like you’re thirteen.”

Carvey then introduced Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who provided a list of 10 reasons we shouldn’t be celebrating 25 years of .com. One of his reasons: “I’m still waiting on my new Nigerian friend to send me that twenty-five thousand dollars.” (Note to self: never follow an emmy-award winning comedian on the stage and try to be funny.)

The gala included a video celebrating the “.com 25″, including eBay, eTrade, and Craigslist (the latter of which is actually on a .org domain). VeriSign also welcomed the “Domain Pioneers” consisting of some of the biggest domain name registrars. Among those accepting the honor on behalf of their companies were Warren Adelman of Go Daddy, Elliot Noss of Tucows, Bhavin Turakhia of Directi, and Jeff Kupietzky of Oversee.net

But the most entertaining moment of the evening was Carvey’s improvised introduction of ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush. I know the video below is of low quality (hey, I had a Flip in the back of the room), but you’ll get a kick out of it.