Sorry for the late posting. I read a few days that someone pled guilty for trying to steal domain names.

This really shouldn’t be a surprise. Back in my registrar days I’ve dealt with a few that turned out to be such.

According to the news links (which I’ll post shortly), apparently a man from Nevada posed as an intellectual property lawyer and sent a series of Cease and Desist (C&D) letters to some domain “owners”. He sent such letters to scare them into giving their domain names to him.

I blogged before that one inherent risk in domain names is trademark infringement. Basically the domain name you registered might be seen as intending to infringe a party’s trademark rights.

Trademark holders have the burden of protecting and enforcing their trademark rights or risk losing them. To that end, many send C&Ds hoping to resolve those issues before reaching “formal” dispute resolution.

Anyway, below are the links in question:

http://lawfuel.com/show-release.asp?ID=14827

The Legal Newswire - A Las Vegas man was charged in federal court today with wire fraud for impersonating an intellectual property lawyer and threatening lawsuits against the owners of Internet domain names.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/09/fraudster-who-i.html

A Nevada man pleaded guilty Thursday to his plotting to steal domain names URLs from their legitimate owners by impersonating a California intellectual property lawyer and send threatening letters to domain name owners in hopes of convincing them to turn over the domains to him.

I’m hoping to write more on the subject. But this issue is sometimes so complex it’s not even enough to blog about it in one sitting.

Bottom line is this: there are people out there who will just about do anything to try to get what they want. Your most important “defense” is to be aware of things like these and be ready to deal with them.

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