The Looming (Brand Enforcement) Blackout

There are over 330 million domain names supporting over 1.8 billion websites having a unique hostname on the internet right now. But who owns each of these? There are many reasons one may want to identify the owner or operator of a particular domain or website. In addition to law enforcement and cyber security, owners of IP need to be able to enforce their rights against illegal use of their IP or bad faith domain name registration and use. For example, if your trademark is being infringed by its use on a particular website, you would want to be able to identify the owner, send a cease and desist, and/or sue. Somewhat similar to registering a home or motor vehicle, domains or websites are typically registered and information useful to identifying the individual responsible for the domain or website has, historically, been publically available. WHOIS is a system established in the 1980s, as the modern internet was emerging. It is used to look up domain registrations in…

Read more detail on Recent Advertising Law posts –

This entry was posted in Advertising Law and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply