Company argues first to offer second level blockchain domains in a TLD should get exclusive rights to it.
After filing a lawsuit against Gateway.io over the Handshake .wallet domain two weeks ago, Unstoppable Domains has asked the court for a preliminary injunction (pdf) to stop the sale of the competing domains.
In its request, Unstoppable compared the Handshake .wallet domains with having duplicate street addresses:
Imagine that someone attempted to create an alternate universe of street addresses, in which they intentionally sold the address “844 North King Street, Wilmington, DE” to some third party, such that it did not correspond to this courthouse, but to a different location entirely (knowing the address already pointed to this courthouse). Imagine further that when one searched for “844 North King Street, Wilmington, DE” on the internet, the only thing determining which location was revealed to the searcher was the type of computer used to run the search. This is the exact kind of chaos that Defendants are creating with the counterfeit .WALLET domain names that they are offering for sale, despite Plaintiff’s already being the exclusive provider of .WALLET domain names.
Unstoppable noted that on the internet there is a single authority (ICANN) that allocates top level domains, ensuring that there are no name collisions like this. For blockchain domains, it believes the first entity to begin offering a blockchain top level domain to the public should be able to prevent any other entity from running the same extension:
Because there is no central authority ensuring that no two users register the same .WALLET address, and because there is no technical bar to prevent competing registries from offering the same NFT domain name, the NFT domain name registries rely on a first-come, first-served basis for providers of such domain names. That is, once a registry has begun offering a specific NFT top-level domain name such as .WALLET, no other domain name registry can or should register .WALLET domain names. This is similar to how trademarks work – once a company creates restaurants called McDonald’s, no one else should be naming their restaurants McDonald’s.
If Unstoppable’s view was accepted, there would be a rush to begin offering second level domains on alt-root blockchain domains, both from Handshake top level domain owners and competing services. (.Wallet was registered on Handshake before Unstoppable started offering the domain, but it wasn’t made available for other people to register second level domains until later.)
To further bolster its claim, Unstoppable again cites a pending trademark application that will likely not be granted:
To further secure its exclusive rights in the .WALLET domain, Unstoppable filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for its WALLET trademark, U.S. Serial No. 90/886,517, which is currently pending.
The company did not mention that its .wallet application (with the preceding dot) was denied and that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sent a non-final action notice to Unstoppable regarding the cited trademark because it doesn’t grant trademarks for top level domains.
Unstoppable Domains also revealed that a registrant of domains under Handshake’s .wallet domains threatened to sue Unstoppable if it sold matching domains in its naming system.
Unstoppable Domains just raised $65 million, and you can expect it to throw a lot of resources at this lawsuit to try to defend its business model.
“Decentralized”. LOL.
You beat me to it. Handshake are purist decentralists, so they’d need to fork the protocol to do anything about it. If Unstoppable wins, it will be very interesting if a decision is actually enforceable, and how the mechanics of an enforcement would work. Fascinating.
“Unstoppable” is playing a foolish game and is in a lose-lose position, since any staked handshake tld can be minted in a decentralized manner and no one can stop them from minting or resolving. not only can the minter be anonymous but also be in a country that couldn’t care less about US trademarks. “unstoppable” is larping and playing a game its values they don’t even understand.
“Because there is no central authority ensuring that no two users register the same .WALLET address, and because there is no technical bar to prevent competing registries from offering the same NFT domain name, the NFT domain name registries rely on a first-come, first-served basis for providers of such domain names. That is, once a registry has begun offering a specific NFT top-level domain name such as .WALLET, no other domain name registry can or should register .WALLET domain names.”
New gTLDs: thank God we have ICANN.
Jean you are stuck in the 90s, like ICANN you will be left behind and forgotten.
We’ve seen such attempts with alternative roots and nothing has ever happened because of no regulation. They’ve kept trying for the past 20, 30 years maybe. With no or few adoption because of regulation there is a second risk: “selling”. Look at new gTLD numbers, numbers don’t lie. I sincerely y hope I am wrong but with so much money raised, there are other ways to benefit from the new gTLD program.
Company argues first to offer second level blockchain domains in a TLD should get exclusive rights to it.
If that is true get your current ext up and running as they have just stated who should get exclusive rights to what extensions based upon first to offer. Maybe this way they won’t come after your extension if it collides.
They just shot themselves in the foot. LOL. What is really funny is companies like this don’t listen to TM lawyers who have been doing this for 30 years. They actually think they will get a TM. Some domain owners or brokers think they’re now trademark lawyers and know more than these guys. LOL!. It is like someone who has not golfed telling tiger woods how to hit the ball.
Hey US you going to fight namecheap now too. Bullies in yard won’t last with them, they have money to fight. No one likes a bully who hits the little guy.
they’re all subdomains – unsupported by browsers – won’t change cause eth sucks
the original url is something like yourname.wallet.unstopabledomains.com = yourname.wallet if resolved over their network only
very bad for seo