Protecting Your Domain Name: Understanding The Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
Despite the simple functionality on many levels of a domain name, it is vital to the success of an online business enterprise. At its heart, a domain name essentially is an address that tells a user of the Internet how to find a particular website. In many instances, the owners of trade or service marks use their marks as part of their business domain names. Nonetheless, there are many instances in which someone else may take advantage and start using the trade or service mark as part of another domain name. With this well in mind, it is incumbent upon trade and service mark owners to monitor to make certain that others are not misusing their intellectual property in the registration of other domain names.
No matter how the domain name usage actually is discovered, trade or service mark owners have two basic options for resolving disputes over domain names. First, a person or company can take action under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Policy. The benefits of this process is that it is relatively fast and relative inexpensive. There are drawbacks that include the fact that...