Doug Isenberg: confusing domain speculators and investors with cybersquatters?
What a well deserved outcry Doug Isenberg’s commentary on CNet elicited from domain speculators. Mr. Isenberg is a lawyer with GigaLaw.com, and more importantly a WIPO UDRP panelist. This means that he is sometimes the person arbitrating domain name disputes.
One problem with his opinion piece is that he equates domainers with cybersquatters. Even if all cybersquatters consider themselves to be domainers, it is certainly NOT fair to brand all legitimate domain name investors as somehow squatting on trademarked names. No one condones the registration of trademarks and service marks. Domainers have known for a long time that this is a poor investment strategy; they are businessmen first and foremost.
My other main beef with his article is that he portrays small investors as the threat. Domainers typically register generic names that should never be protected by IP/trademark laws. The real culprits are typically larger companies, not individual speculators. The first time (1996) I sought to register my family surname .com I found that NetIdentity (now TuCows) had registered it, along with thousands of other common names of people. Their business model was and still is to extort fees for each service offered for a subdomain. For example, for smith.net a man named Fred Smith might choose to pay for an email account on the subdomain fred.smith.net for $25/year and a website at http://fred.smith.net for $25/year.
So can someone tell me why it’s OK for NetIdentity to register thousands of people’s surnames to lease back to them in piecemeal fashion, but it’s NOT alright for a clever opportunist to register a common misspelling of a company name? I personally have no interest in typo domains, but I don’t think these folks that do are the great problem Mr. Isenberg does. Internet governance may be a better place to look for problems.
June 27th, 2006 at 7:29 am
There’s a tremendous difference between trading on someone else trademark, and making services based on surnames available to everyone with an interest in that surname. If smith.net had been registered by Fred Smith, only he could use it. Because it was registered by NetIdentity, anyone can use smith.net for a nominal fee. Neither extortion nor piecemeal.
June 30th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Fair enough, and thanks for offering your opinion. But I still don’t see much difference between the two. Names are used by both people like me, and by companies like mine to identify themselves and their products. If a person shouldn’t profit from using a domain SIMILAR TO a company’s trademark or service mark, why should a company be allowed to profit from using people’s names on an industrial scale. Doesn’t this line of reasoning suggest that people should register their names as trademarks if they wish to get the same protection that companies enjoy?
May 17th, 2007 at 11:41 am
“NORD” is trademarked, yet NetIdentity (now TuCows), use it. Is this ok? or do they have it trademarked also ? If they don’t, are they cybersquatters?