NIPC News

WIPO Head Office in Geneva Photo Jane Lambert © 2006 Jane Elizabeth Lambert: all rights reserved Jane Lambert Since 2005 the European Union has had its own top level domain space for businesses, institutions and individuals domiciled in any of the EU or EFTA mmber states.  The best known users of that domain space are the EU institutions such as the European Union itself (http://europa.eu/), the Court of Justice of the European Union (https://curia.europa.eu) and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (https://euipo.europa.eu) but there are others who have registered ".eu" domain names. The agreement to register an ".eu" domain name requires complaints by trade mark owners over the registration of the domain name to be referred to a panel appointed by a dispute resolution service provider chosen by the complainant. Up to now, the Czech Arbitration Court  has been the only dispute resolution service provider but from tomorrow it wi...

Jane Lambert When you key in the name of a business or one of its products or services into the address of a modern browser like Chrome the chances are that it will take you to where you want to go. Increasingly frequently, however. such an exercise will lead you to a landing page with sponsored links and searches including links to products or services of the business you are trying to reach. Occasionally, it will even lead to a spoof site that looks and feels like a genuine site but if a user tries to order goods or services through it or simply leaves an email address all sorts of annoying things can happen of which serial spamming is probably the least to worry about. The reason why internet users are waylaid in this way is that it is very cheap and easy to register a domain name that is the same or similar to a business name or trade mark . Now registering a domain name that is the same as, or similar to, someone else's trade mark or business name without justif...