According to DomainNameNews today, a company has been found guilty of a Reverse Domain Name Hijack attempt, which carries a fine of $5,000. The report says this is the first time a company has been found guilty of that charge, which I find remarkable. More remarkable, however, is the mere $5,000 fine! The legal fees for defending against claims and attacks like these has got to be that much, if not more.

In this case, someone held ForSale.ca back in 2000. Globe Media registered the trademark “www.ForSale.ca” which was awarded in 2006, and Globe subsequently sought control of the domain. Since the original registration preceeded the trademark, they were denied rights to the domain.

But Globe Media watched carefully and tried again after the domain dropped in 2009 and an employee of a domain registrar picked it up. That employee was Tom Brown, of BareMetal.com. Glove offered him $5,000 but he instead sold it to another company 9 days later for $29,000. Globe went after that owner, again claiming trademark rights.

DomainNameNews  shows how someone uncovered that Globe had previously registred “numerous trademark infringing domains including Ducati.ca, Labatts.ca, Mentos.ca, Zantac.ca” etc. and the Canadian arbitration panel decided to find Globe guilty of bad faith actions which led to the finding and the fine.

Takeaways:

• notice how an employee of a registrar picked up a quality name that dropped and sold it 9 days later for $29000
• notice how the trademark game appears to be alive and well, with companies playing both sides
• notice how small the fine is ($5,000) for abusing the system for $30,000 gains

The upcoming Traffic Internet conference in Santa Clara later this month will feature Dr. Paul Mockapetris at the podium. Dr. Mockapetris and Jon Postel invented the “domain name system” (DNS), the core domain name to IP number lookup system powering the world wide web since it began.

If you operate a business website, you are currently betting your business on the reliability of the DNS system. If you have built a brand around a domain name, you have invested in the future of the DNS system.
I can’t think of a more relevant speaker for a domain industry conference… I hope we get to hear about where DNS is going or is likely to go in the future, as that insight must be amazingly valuable for everyone holding a premium domain name or a valuable Internet brand.
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is April 27-30 see TargetedTraffic.com

I’m working on a newsletter I call WebPrescience. I will host it at Webprescience.com. It will highlight insights into the future of the web, as I and others see and describe it, or hint at it. I hope it will ultimately replace this blog, and significantly advance my objective of noting, describing, and questioning what it means to be competitive on the Internet. My kind of futures research.

Had I already started the Web Prescience newsletter, I would have included excerpts from this New York Times article  “Ping Software that Monitors Your Work, Wherever You Are“. I have a lot to say about this article, in the context of the future of the web within our global economy, but right now I will just take a small quote:

“No one gets fired,” Mr. Webb said. “They just don’t get work.”

Obviously I need the WebPrescience Newsletter so I can expound on this revealing news report. On that note, if anyone can recommend a newsletter system that represents a good balance between  AWeber and hosted Mailman, please let me know either in the comments or via email to john at this domain. I love the controls that make Aweber so reliable as a delivery agent, yet I dislike the extreme control they exert over my membership lists. I like hosted Mailman for it’s robustness and simplicity, yet can’t affford the spam blocking risk.