Author name: fairwindsp

FairWinds Partners ⬥ 10 November The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 91 meeting is being held in Honolulu, Hawaii this week. The group works to create protocols that can be adopted to solve technical problems in the infrastructure of the Internet and as such, the IETF meetings focus more heavily on the technical side of […]

Steve Levy ⬥  30 October We write about trademark enforcement and domain disputes, but we rarely discuss how these policies – which allow for the resolution of disputes over domain names to take place outside of a court room – came to be. And it’s an important topic, since having a single, agreed-upon process for

Steve Levy ⬥  30 October We write about trademark enforcement and domain disputes, but we rarely discuss how these policies – which allow for the resolution of disputes over domain names to take place outside of a court room – came to be. And it’s an important topic, since having a single, agreed-upon process for

Sam Foster ⬥ 28 October As the popularity of social media platforms increases and their numbers proliferate, attorneys are constantly trying to shut down usernames that harmfully infringe on brands or trademarks. Thanks to the variety of policies and procedures that exist from platform to platform, it is not a simple matter. Recently at an

Steve Levy ⬥  27 October As a brand owner have you ever wondered how efficiently you’re using your precious trademark enforcement budget?  During my nearly 10-year tenure heading up the intellectual property practice for The Home Depot, this was constantly at the forefront of my mind.  Unfortunately, this may not have been the case for

Yvette Miller ⬥ 27 October The United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union’s Plenipotentiary Conference, which the Washington Post called “the latest battle over who should run the Internet”, continues this week and through to November 7th in Busan, South Korea. The “battle” that the publication is referring to is an issue that persists in many Internet

Sam Foster ⬥ 24 October For some newer, smaller brands, pushing out great content via social media posts – promoted or organic – allows them to address product questions quickly and publicly, as well as increase awareness and recognition, driving customers to websites to make purchases (think companies like Betabrand or Alex and Ani). For

Steve Levy ⬥  29 September I’d like to take a brief departure this week from our usual discussion of domain name disputes and talk about the important issue of social media. As many of you know, trademark infringement in the online arena is not limited to domain names, and many brand owners have been faced

Yvette Miller ⬥ 29 September This past Saturday, ICANN closed the comment period on enhancing its accountability process, a topic that will continue to be a big discussion point when the organization convenes its next public meeting in Los Angeles in mid-October. One expressed purpose of this process is to ensure that ICANN remains “accountable

Steve Levy ⬥ 22 September When reading the “Parties’ Contentions” section of this decision over the domain <areds2.com>, my mind was starting to fill up with all the potential issues: common-law trademarks, who registered first, fair use, the use of whois privacy services, and the rarity of government agencies asserting their trademarks. However, the panel

Yvette Miller ⬥ 22 September In the expanding Internet of Things, trademark owners have the task of making sure that intellectual property rights keep up with technology. At last week’s INTA conference on Internet, Innovation and ICANN: The Evolving Landscape of the Net, IP experts discussed how data is gathered through home tools (such as

Yvette Miller ⬥ 15 September Today is the last day that ICANN is accepting comments on “Implementing Rights Protection Mechanisms in the Name Collision Mitigation Framework”. The final structure of the framework will help inform trademark owners’ digital strategy decisions in the coming months as they plan to protect and promote their brand names in