New York Court of Appeals decision holds that publication on a website constitutes a single publication under the single publication rule of defamation.

I don’t know why lawsuits like this get filed.  Alanis Morrisette (who owns and uses alanis.com) sues Russ Smith over alanis.net  (which, he alleges, he has been warehousing).  More damages accruing to society because NSI turned the .net TLD into a sandtrap for silly litigation (but that’s a rant for another day).

Instead of making everything a federal case, how about this instead: a without prejudice demand letter saying: “if in the future you use this warehoused domain name in a manner which infringes, we’ll sue, and if you sell this name, we’ll send the new buyer a copy of this letter.”

p.s. The ZDNet article is entitled “Alanis Sues Cybersquatter.”  I’m one of those trademark lawyers for famous mark owners you read the horrible things about and I’m offended that someone should be labeled a cybersquatter on the basis of a filed complaint.

Craig Mende of Fross Zelnick, famous trademark litigator, writes in to report his latest victory before the Second Circuit.  Times Mirror published FIELD AND STREAM magazine for about 100 years and sold some items related to hunting and fishing.  Field and Stream Licenses Company had been selling all sorts of goods and services, including items related to hunting and fishing, for over 90 years.  The two parties had a coexistence agreement since 1984.  Now it was time for TM to sue FSLC over hunting and fishing items.

Two holdings of interest: two parties can use the identical mark and both can still own strong marks (use that the next time you get sued for dilution).  Also, this case deals with the overlap problem.  If an area of interest can be argued to be a natural area of expansion for two mark owners, the first one gets it.  If both go in and do nothing for, say 90 years, neither own exclusivity in that area.

And that’s why you have to file trademark applications early and often.

While I am proud of my Ping Whois (gives you full whois and whether websites and email are configured), I am always prepared to suggest other improved whois products, such as this multi-TLD wildcard search.  Thanks to Icann Blog for pointing this out.

Ernie the Atorney whose blog I heartily recommend, turned me on to this article debunking the claim, “Half the world has never made a phone call,” a factoid quoted by UN Secretary Generals, presidential candidates and other People Who Know The Facts.  Just remember what the Firesign Theatre said.

The Wall Street Journal ran a column yesterday (if it wasn’t subscription only, you would be able to read it in seconds by clicking here but it is so you can’t), supporting the view that there really isn’t a field of cyberlaw.  The column quotes from a law review article entitled Against Cyberlaw: “The steam engine . . . probably transformed American law, but the ‘law of the steam engine’ never existed.”  This reminded me of Prof. Lessig’s rebuttal of Judge Easterbrook’s quote that “there was no more a law of cyberspace than there was a law of the horse.”

The FTC has warned operators of various major search engines that they have to make it clearer that companies have paid to be included in web search results.

Ben Edelman of the Berkman Center at Harvard has compiled another study on domain names, this one entitled “DNS as a Search Engine: A Quantitative Evaluation.”  As a matter of disclosure, I admit that I suggested this project to Ben and helped in its methodology.

The study is a first step at proving what many assert: The domain name system is a good addressing system but a bad directory.  The study took 100 famous brands, 100 randon “plain old” brands, 100 random trading names and 100 college names, and used those names as search terms in the DNS (by affixing .com or .edu to them), or search terms in google or as RealNames (while RealNames was still working).

My scan of the results is that the “dot com” assumption (that ACME can be found at .  ACME.COM) works for famous marks (because by now famous companioes have bought back their names), and works miserably for small companies.  Both Google and RelNames have statistically significant improved accuracy ratings for smaller companies.

I understand this to be a pilot study.  I hope there will be helpful feedback to design a more robust study, the point that debates such as “unrestricted TLDs vs. restricted TLDs” and “key words vs. search engines” can be fueled by more facts and less rhetoric.