Press Release announcing that Zuccarini (background here) will receive 30 months in prison for violating the Truth in Domain Names Act.
At least two of the domain names mentioned in the press release, DINSEYLAND.COM and BOBTHEBIULDER.COM appear to have been registered by third parties and are pointing to pages of links.
How Google’s results compare to those of Yahoo’s when the search term is NIKE, via Langreiter.com. Thanks to Greg for this.
A judge has ruled that a lawyer should be awarded $300/hour for his courtroom work, but only $150/hour for his written work, which was “‘careless’ and ‘laden with typographical errors.'” Via NYLawyer.
Cache La Pourde has a federal trademark registration for PROFILE for animal feeds. Land O’Lakes has an application for LAND O’LAKES PROFILE for feed and is selling the feed depicted. Cache La Pourde has filed a $132 million trademark suit against Land O’Lakes.
Apple is promoting its iLife ’04 product with the slogan “It’s like Microsoft Office for the rest of your life.”
Interesting.
Inman Real Estate News reports on a web site hosting company specializing in create websties for real estate agents, that is allegedly holding customers’ domain names ‘hostage.’ The article states that some agents ‘suspected’ that the hosting company had registered the domain names in the company’s name rather than in the agents’ names.
A domain name registrant shouldn’t have to suspect anything. Go to Internic whois and find out who the registrar is. Go to the registrar’s whois and find out who the admin contact is. If it’s not you, and you can’t make it you by accessing an online account with the registrar, then you don’t control the domain name. As far as I know (and I would appreciate feedbakc on this), if you want to control a domain name then you have to control two things: (1) the email address of the administrative contact; and (2) the account with the registrar. The tech contact controls the deployment of the domain name but the admin contact controls who the tech contact is. The person who has the password to the account for that domain name can change the admin contact.
The entity identified in whois as the ‘organization’ to whom the name is registered is of interest but ultimately irrelevant. The entity that can change the admin contract is, in my view, the true owner of a domain name.
More domain name disputes between politicians, via Washingtonpost.com.
New York Lawyer article on disclaimers for law firms’ websites. The article contrasts Mayer Brown’s 4000 word disclaimer to Davis Polk’s “The information on this site does not convey legal advice of any kind.” I looked at its site, it doesn’t.
I’m not sure whether, on the whole, passive law firm websites by themselves create more risk than any other publication by a lawyer, in any medium, that conveys legal information. The real problem, in my view, lies in unsolicited communications to the firm that begin “I was wondering what your take is on . . .” Alternately: “My friend received a demand letter . . .”
By the way, the information on this site does not convey legal advice of any kind.
UPDATE: It’s been brought to my attention that the NY Lawyer article was based on this post.
