MEDIATION & ARBITRATION
July 11, 2005
Typosquatter Loses Battle With Google
Last week, the National Arbitration Forum released a ruling in favor of Google. The issue was whether certain domain names were confusingly similar to Google's domain name. The disputed domain names included googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoofle.com and gooigle.com. Since the extra letter in each name is next to a correct letter, it appears that this is a case of "typosquatting." According to Wikipedia, "[t]yposquatting is a form of cybersquatting which relies on the chances that a person who enters a website address into a web browser will accidentally enter an incorrect website address and be led to an alternative address which the cybersquatter owns"
The decision is only one of thousands of domain name disputes heard annually by the National Arbitration Forum.
For more, check out the National Arbitration Forum Blog, or the AP story (via BusinessWeek Online).
In my research, I found that ggogle.com, gooogle.com, gogle.com, and googlee.com all lead to Google (with googlee.com leading to the English version). However, googgle.com and googlle.com lead to other sites. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw these sites challenged soon.
Posted by Melody Wirz at 10:39 AM.
Permalink: Typosquatter Loses Battle With Google
MEDIATION & ARBITRATION
January 16, 2005
Japanese patent attorneys to acquire more power
The Japanese Patent Office has decided to revise the Patent Attorneys Law to allow patent attorneys to represent clients in out-of-court disputes over copyrights for music, movies and other works. Such out-of-court dispute resolution would be in the format of arbitration and mediation proceedings. The move by the JPO comes as the number of copyright disputes is sky-rocketing in Japan.
“Intellectual property cases are expected to increase because of the diffusion of music and game software in addition to publications, which already have a large number of cases. The office intends to solve these cases smoothly and increase convenience for individuals and companies by opening up activities to patent attorneys.”
It will be interesting to see if the final regulations include mandatory arbitration and mediation training, without which, it is hard to imagine the new regulations will have much of an impact.
Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 01:17 PM.
Permalink: Japanese patent attorneys to acquire more power
MEDIATION & ARBITRATION
November 11, 2004
creative commons expands into science & patents
from c|net news.com:
Creative Commons, a nonprofit group that has proposed new ways to share creative works by use of a "some rights reserved" copyright system, is expanding from the realm of copyright into patents and scientific publishing by launching "Science Commons". From their website and press release:
An intellectual-property system that allows sharing between scientists is
particularly important, given research grants that often make results proprietary, as well as recent international changes in patent law that expand the scope of data protection, the group said. The "commons" approach could help introduce needed flexibility, it added.
"Right at the historical moment, when we have the technologies to permit worldwide availability and distributed processing of scientific data...we are busy locking up that data and slapping legal restrictions on transfer," the Creative Commons site says. "Judicious balance is needed. The tendency to claim that property rights are never the answer, or that openness always solves all problems, must be avoided."
My firm represents several university and academic institutions and we see the tension between the academic desire to freely share information versus the need and legal obligation of the university to properly protect and commercialize the developments made by the university's employees. While the Creative Commons' approach is novel and worth discussing and exploring further, the universities' themselves will have to be the ones to "buy into" or adopt the approach - not individual academics or researchers. The university is the "owner" of the discovery or invention (pursuant to the Bayh-Dole Act) and therefore is the only entity with the legal right to dispose of the discovery assets in an alternative manner.
It will be interesting to see how AUTM (Association of University Technology Managers) responds.
Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 10:44 AM.
Permalink: creative commons expands into science & patents
MEDIATION & ARBITRATION
November 03, 2004
IP FIVE-BY-FIVE - THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
Matt Homann over at the The [Non]Billable Hour blog, regularly hosts a question/answer series famously known as the "Five-by-Five". For each Five-by-Five, Matt solicits five experts in an area of the law to give five responses to a specific question about the law.
The most recent episode is the IP Edition. Matt asked five intellectual property law bloggers the question: What five things would you change about IP law and/or practice?
Matt graciously asked me to participate and here are a couple of comments from each of the bloggers:
Stephen Nipper: You are your brother's keeper. One of the things IP practitioners tend to do is ignore our responsibility to spend time educating non-IP attorneys as to the basics of IP law. Lets face it, our colleagues (understandably) aren't typically very good at issue spotting when it comes to IP issues. The result is countless pain and suffering (and much gnashing of teeth). Solution? Go teach a CLE to general practitioners, blog, write articles for your local bar journal, start writing a newsletter, etc. You will be rewarded.
Douglas Sorocco: Everyone needs to take a deep breath regarding software patents. The end of the world is not near, the seas are not going to be flooding our coastal cities and software patents are not stifling development of new and useful tools and processes. Software developers are simply going to have to become better business people and accept that nothing is free and patent clearance searches must be made an integral part of the development process.
Martin Schwimmer: I also think that the development of the UDRP is an astounding success in that it represents a model of dispute resolution. There are times that a trademark owner has to walk away from the misuse of a mark in a domain because litigation will cost $50,000, but a UDRP can cost under $3000. The UDRP is not a perfect solution, but it has absolutely achieved what it set out to do. I still do a lot of them, probably one a week. I think the UDRP may pave the way to other forms of alternate dispute resolution for IP problems.
Dennis Crouch: Law Firm Life: Billing Requirements: Billing expectations at most large law firms are simply unreasonable. They disrupt family life and tend to destroy any solid mentoring program. Today, however, I’m upset with how the long hours spent billing really cramp the ability of associates to begin to build a practice of their own. The hour requirements were raised after the salary bump several years ago. Now, there are rumors that another salary jump is in store for BigLaw associates. In my opinion, rather than increasing associate salaries, firms should compete based on hours.
Mark Partridge: Eliminate rights in gross mentality: My second change, admittedly related to the first, would be to eliminate the "rights in gross" mentality. By this, I mean the notion that a trademark creates an absolute and exclusive right. One sees this tendency on both sides of the rights issue. A trademark owner may have the view that no one else may use its mark for any purpose. The junior user may believe there is no infringement if the mark it adopts is not identical to another's trademark. Both views are mistaken, of course. The rationale for protecting trademarks is preventing deception of the public, not to protect a right in gross. Again the effect of the marks in question on the public mind is critical. Some uses of another's mark are permitted because they do not deceive the public. The use of nonidentical marks on related goods may still be an infringement because they deceive the public.
These are the comments I found most interesting, you should visit The [Non]Billable Hour blog for the full posts. Each authors' blog can also be seen on the web: Nipper, Sorocco, Schwimmer, Partridge, Crouch, and Homann
Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 04:41 PM.
Permalink: IP FIVE-BY-FIVE - THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
