David Weslow, ESQ., Wiley Rein partner.
For the second year in a row, the number of domain theft incidents continued to present a serious challenge to domain owners.
Since early 2014, the requirement by ICANN for registrars to present registrants with contact verification methods, generated a huge increase in mass email phishing.
Domain theft, the unlawful change in ownership of domain names, led many IP attorneys to devise new methods of combating this type of crime.
The case of ACME Billing, Inc. was defended at the federal level, and attorney David Weslow, partner in Wiley Rein’s Intellectual Property Practice, successfully used that ruling in a separate case of domain theft, recently.
In Watson v. Doe that involved the domain name 256.com, the court held that the domain registrant, Gray Watson, was entitled to relief under the in rem provisions of the federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and the court ordered return of the stolen domain name.
While the domain is still in the hands of the thief after it was transferred to the Chinese domain registrar Ename, the decision’s enforcement is a matter of time.
For the full text of the federal court’s decision on 256.com click here to view in PDF format.
A number of times I have suggested a domain holding pattern, no one wants in though