Business Without Borders – International Business and Tax Planning Blog

Posts Tagged ‘goodwill’

You are a website owner and have just found out that another company has registered a domain name that is nearly identical to your website name. Many of your clients or potential customers are being diverted to this web site when they search for your company’s name on the web in search engines like Google or Yahoo. In fact, it was from one of your customers you found out about this. You believe this party is a “cybersquatter” —that is, the site owner has registered your trademark, or a name similar to it, for the purpose of diverting web traffic away from your site and making a commercial profit to your detriment.

What Can You Do?

Fortunately you are not without options. An organization called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was charged with administering domain names on a global basis. ICANN, as it is known, in turn authorizes certain arbitral forums to decide domain name disputes. What is an “arbitral forum”? It is an organization that administers arbitrations, which are proceedings for deciding disputes. Some of the more common arbitral forums are WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization), based in Switzerland, and NAF (the National Arbitration Forum) here in the U.S.

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