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Tag: WHOIS

Nov 28, 2018

Addressing Cybersquatting in a Post-WHOIS Blackout World

WHOIS Blackout & Cybersquatting

Imagine a customer complains to you about a product they purchased online from YOURBRAND.COM. Only you don’t own this domain name, and the problematic product is a counterfeit. You need this website to be shut down immediately. In the past, your first move may have been to locate the owner of the website, using WHOIS, the protocol used to query registrar databases for domain name ownership information. However, now when you go to WHOIS, the registrant’s information is missing, other than a jumble of numbers and letters for an email address and the registrant’s country. This is the post-WHOIS blackout… Read more

May 31, 2018

New Developments: Disappearing Data: WHOIS Blackout

Courtroom: ICANN Suing for Use of WHOIS Data

Further to our IP alert on May 22, two important developments have taken place in the last few days. First, on Friday, May 25 ICANN filed a legal action in Germany against EPAG, a German ICANN accredited registrar, seeking a ruling by the court on the continued ability of the registrar to collect WHOIS data and preserve it for access by those entities having a legitimate purpose. This action, intended to preserve WHOIS data, will be monitored by many intellectual property owners and associations and appears to be the first legal measure taken in order to ensure the continued ability… Read more