Domain Names & E-Commerce

E-Commerce

Ladas & Parry combines its experience in intellectual property law with its thorough understanding and knowledge of the rapidly evolving law of the Internet and E-Commerce. Not only do we strive to make certain that our clients patent, trademark, copyright, domain name and other intangible rights are fully protected and enforced as they pertain to the Internet, we seek to alert our clients to new opportunities in which their existing rights can be exploited on a commercial level in order to further enhance their value. Our firm is uniquely qualified to handle the most sophisticated e-commerce transactions and have drafted and successfully negotiated the full spectrum of "cyberspace" agreements, including website development agreements, content and domain name licenses, linking, framing, on-line advertising abuse, privacy policies, technology transfer, shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses. This practice area is sufficiently important to our clients that our Digital Practice Group has established a website dedicated to this practice area.See www.digitalbrands.info.

Domain Names: Acquisition, Maintenance and Enforcement

Attendant to the explosion of E-commerce in recent years is the critical importance in protecting our clients' trademark rights as they pertain to the Internet and the rapidly evolving system of domain name governance. In view of the ever-present "cybersquatting" threat, our firm strives to alert our clients to the emergence of new generic top level domains ("gTLD's") and country-code top level domains ("ccTLDs") so that they may be in a position to secure such rights in the most expedient fashion possible. Our firm is also unique, not only in that the firm has a subsidiary, Ladas Domains, which is an ICANN-accredited domain registrar which can act to register domain names efficiently for the firm's clients, but also in that the firm is capable of alerting our clients to any new domain names registered by third parties which are exactly the same or similar to our clients' trademark or domain name rights through our Domain Name Watch Services. We maintain our client's rights on a computer database in order to make certain that our client's domain name rights are properly and regularly maintained and renewed through Ladas Domains. Furthermore, our firm is one of the leaders in enforcing our client's trademark and domain name rights not only through traditional litigation fora, but also through quasi-governmental arbitration procedures such as the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy ("UDRP") administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN"). Our Digital Brands Practice Group is one of the largest filers of complaints under the UDRP for the original TLDsand under other similar domain name resolution policies established for other TLDs.

Domain Names

Resolving Domain Name Disputes: Trademark Abuse by Domain Name Cybersquatters & Cyberpirates - Internet speculators have increasingly taken advantage of the largely unregulated domain name registration system to take a free ride off of trademark holders’ valuable intellectual property rights. Trademark owners that have fallen victim to these opportunists need specialized counsel to guide them through this new and evolving body of law. This article illustrates a number of the myriad hazards trademark holders must navigate when dealing with online infringement.

E-Commerce

Overview of U.S. Laws Relating to E-Commerce - Recent developments pertaining to Federal and State law as they have evolved in the "electronic age".