The gTLD, THE .BRAND, AND THE UGLY: Trademark Issues in the Wild West of Domain Name Registration
By McKenna Steere
The latest generic top-level domain (“gTLD”) name expansion, implemented by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) in 2011, poses significant obstacles to trademark owners seeking to protect their mark in an ever-expanding Internet. ICANN asserts that the recent gTLD expansion attempts to limit the fraudulent and infringing use of a trademark within domain names. However, in reality, this expansion forces trademark owners to make difficult, costly, and strategic decisions when protecting their mark, especially with the increased diminution of a domain name’s value. This Comment demonstrates why ICANN’s most recent expansion is in the interest of neither consumers nor trademark owners, why its implementation contravenes longstanding legislative and judicial approaches to trademarks, and how these disparities can be reconciled.
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In Re Google Inc.: ECPA, Consent, and the Ordinary Course of Business in an Automated World
By Christopher Batiste-Boykin
Question: How do you fit a square peg into a round hole? Answer: You either hack off the edges of the square or you make the hole bigger. The common saying above reflects how courts have addressed the automated scanning of email content in different factual contexts. At least one federal court has suggested that, under certain circumstances, electronic communications service (“ECS”) providers may be able to scan the content of email to provide targeted advertisements. Another federal court in the same district signaled that ECS providers may be liable under Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”)’ when they engage in this practice.
