Author name: fairwindsp

By Steve Levy Way back near the dawn of the 21st century, before the tsunami that was to become known as “social media” crashed upon the shores of our collective notions of sanity, a photographer touched off what has become one of the earliest and most enduring internet memes that has since reverberated around the […]

By Steve Levy A couple of recent UDRP decisions have highlighted the issue of what’s within the scope of, and appropriate for the policy and what disputes are really better suited for resolution in a courtroom setting. A frequent comment is that the UDRP was designed only to handle obvious cases of cybersquatting. It was

By Steve Levy Not all domain name disputes need to end up as UDRP complaints. Although it’s become more of a challenge since the adoption of the GDPR – which registrars have used as a reason to hide nearly ALL useful whois contact information – demand letters and other outreach to domain name owners can sometimes lead

By Steve Levy You know that an issue has grown to a substantial size when it makes it into The Wall Street Journal. For many years now, FairWinds has been helping clients navigate the dangers of online counterfeits and fraud and it seems we were well ahead of the curve. A June 10th WSJ article, quoting

By Steve Levy In all the years I’ve been filing UDRP complaints, there had only been a couple of cases where I’ve encountered evidence that was blatantly manufactured in an effort to show that a domain name owner had legitimate rights to the disputed domain name. In one case, a respondent submitted a modified corporate registration

By Steve Levy Do you really know the nuts and bolts of what goes into a successful UDRP case? Let’s start with the basics. There’s the Policy itself, the UDRP Rules, and then each dispute provider has its own Supplemental Rules. In order to win, the party filing the case (the “Complainant”) needs to prove the

By Steve Levy When brand owners talk about online intellectual property enforcement the first topic is usually domain names and the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Another topic might be the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by which copycat website can be taken down. But less discussed are social media usernames despite being so ubiquitous

By Steve Levy In UDRP cases, a key threshold test for succeeding is the ability to prove you have the trademark rights. And recently there have been a few cases in which the complainants were unable to do so. These cases are instructive for brand owners who are considering domain name enforcement actions. It is

By Steve Levy Maybe you just started a new in-house job, or your company just made a new acquisition or merger. Maybe, in your due diligence, you noticed a domain name that uses an important company trademark and resolves to a sketchy looking website. Maybe you thought to yourself, “hmm, this domain is a bit

By Steve Levy Maybe you just started a new in-house job, or your company just made a new acquisition or merger. Maybe, in your due diligence, you noticed a domain name that uses an important company trademark and resolves to a sketchy looking website. Maybe you thought to yourself, “hmm, this domain is a bit