Phishing, slamming and other fraudulent e-mails: Stay alert during the end-of-year holidays!

The end-of-year holidays often announce the upsurge of fraudulent mass e-mails campaigns. Indeed, cybercriminals take advantage of this period, when vigilance can be particularly low, to launch phishing e-mails. What are phishing and slamming? Phishing is used by cybercriminals to obtain personal information in order to commit an identity theft. In the world of phishing, slamming is a well-known variant that consists in encouraging domain names holders to renew their annuity with an... Read More

New document : 5 minutes to understand monitoring solutions

A domain name is not static, it evolves. It can be inactive, associated to a website, to a messaging service. The website can be operated, deactivated or its content can change. So many constant modifications that require a particular follow-up in the form of monitoring of domain names that may infringe your brand.Find in this “5 minutes to understand” document, available for download on the Nameshield’s website, the different monitoring solutions that provide you with information to protec... Read More

New document : 5 minutes to understand the URS procedure

The URS (Uniform Rapid Suspension System) procedure is the latest domain name dispute resolution procedure implemented by ICANN for new extensions. This procedure allows to sanction obvious and indisputable infringements of a trademark right resulting from the registration by third parties of identical or similar domain names regarding the new extensions. Find in this “5 minutes to understand” document in which cases the URS procedure applies and what are the rules and conditions to r... Read More

New document: 5 minutes to understand the SYRELI procedure

Placed under the aegis of AFNIC (French Association for Internet Naming in Cooperation), the SYRELI procedure allows to sanction obvious and indisputable infringements of a trademarks right resulting from the registration by third parties of identical or similar domain names. Find in this “5 minutes to understand” document, available for download on Nameshield’s website, in which cases the SYRELI procedure applies and what are the rules and conditions to respect. Download ... Read More

New document: 5 minutes to understand UDRP procedure

Established on ICANN’s proposal, the UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy) extra-judicial procedure allows to sanction obvious and indisputable infringements of a trademark right resulting from the registration of identical or similar domain names by third parties, a practice commonly referred as “cybersquatting “. UDRP applies not only to generic extensions (gTLDs) in .aero, .biz, .com, .coop, .info, .jobs, .mobi, .museum, .name, .net, .org, .pro, .trave... Read More

New document available on the Nameshield’s website: “5 minutes to understand – Abusive domain names registrations

The digital world is in perpetual evolution and every days, new domain names are registered around the world. Among these new registrations, some can potentially affect your notoriety, your activity, and your results. Fraudsters, through these abusive domain names registrations, seek to benefit from your notoriety as quickly as possible. Find in this “5 minutes to understand” document, available for download on the Nameshield’s website, the different practices of abusive domain n... Read More

New document available on the Nameshield’s website: “5 minutes to understand – Domain names: which procedure?

Names’ holders must protect their brands and domain names against fraud and abuse just as they would protect any other valuable asset. The infringement of your domain name weakens the strength of your brand.If, despite defensive registrations, which are a first line of defense, you find out that a third party has registered a disputed domain name, procedures exist to stop the infringement of your trademark and stop the damage.Find in this “5 minutes to understand” document, available for do... Read More

Booking.com, a generic term turning into a brand?

Image source: Julius_Silver via Pixabay A trademark must be “distinctive”, which is why no one can register a generic term as a trademark. However, a decision of the US Supreme Court on June 30, 2020 allows Booking.com to register its domain name as a trademark. If for USPTO (U.S Patent and Trademark Office), “booking” is a generic term, and adding the .COM would amount to adding “Company” to a name, thus arguing that booking.com cannot be registered as a trademark, the Cou... Read More

Municipal elections 2020: buzyn2020.fr and buzyn2020.paris domain names redirect towards Anne Hidalgo’s campaign

Image source: Sadnos via Pixabay Following the announcement on Sunday February 16, of Agnès Buzyn’s candidacy to Paris municipal elections, several political journalists discovered on Monday that the domain name buzyn2020.fr was registered but redirected towards “Paris en commun”, the campaign website of another candidate, Anne Hidalgo. Several other names were registered on Sunday night, also redirecting towards Paris en commun’s homepage like buzyn2020.paris, agnesbuzyn2020.fr and agnes... Read More

Does the GDPR negatively affect enforcement efforts?

Image source: mohamed_hassan via Pixabay The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has without a doubt a negative impact on the enforcement efforts, according to the participants at the INTA 2019 annual meeting (International Trademark Association) in Boston. Margaret Lia Milam, domain name strategy and management lead at Facebook warned that the platform’s scale makes it a “huge target for bad actors”. Milam stated that because the site is working at such a scale, it cannot turn t... Read More