Lovells

Lovells' global online brand management and protection system, has been successfully used by 44 clients to secure pole positions in protecting their intellectual property (IP) rights under the new .EU domain extension.  This new domain extension for the European Union, was launched on 7 December 2005 with EURid, the official registry for .EU, opening its systems to receive applications at 11:00 Central European Time. 

Lovells submitted over 1000 applications for its clients in the first 15 minutes of the launch at 11:00 CET, amounting to 1.0% of all the applications submitted on the first day.   These clients include Abbey National plc, Amazon.com Inc, Anheuser-Busch, aniMedica GmbH, Deutsche Telekom AG, eBay Inc, Playboy Enterprises International Inc, and Underberg KG.  The firm is now taking care of all the documentary evidence proving the necessary prior rights for each application, which needs to be provided to the Validation Agent by 16 January 2006.  On the first day, according to EURid, over 100,000 applications were submitted from entities across the 25 EU Member States.  

Lovells provided detailed strategic advice to many clients to minimise the risk to their IP rights on the Internet, thereby safeguarding the current and future development of their brands.  The firm also established a unique managed application process in preparation for the launch to ensure that clients maximised their chances of successful applications.  The key issue was getting to pole position before either competing brand owners or cybersquatters (the latter seeking to register brands with a view to selling them at a profit or generating significant amounts of Internet traffic).  

The success of the project is borne out by the fact that 96% of Lovells clients taking advantage of the managed application process, using carefully selected registrars, successfully secured pole positions.  

Commenting on the outcome, David Taylor, head of the Lovells .EU domain name team said:          

".EU is both a challenge for brand owners and an opportunity for cybersquatters.  It should be remembered that this is only the beginning of the four month Sunrise period designed to protect intellectual property rights holders.   Registered trade mark owners have an exclusive window in which they can apply through to 7 February 2006.  Thereafter, other Prior Rights owners will also be able to apply on the basis of other rights including company names, trade names and unregistered rights until 7 April 2006 when .EU will open completely.  We can then fully expect a rush on an even larger scale as no right to the name will need to be proved.  Hence, brand owners should act in the coming weeks if they have not already done so.  Also, and importantly, extreme care needs to be taken when submitting the supporting documentation or the domain name applications will fail."

David Taylor is a solicitor in the Intellectual Property, Technology and Media practice of Lovells, Paris.  David specialises in the protection of brands online and in particular the registration, recovery and protection of domain names.  He heads up a dedicated domain name team which protects clients' rights in over 160 jurisdictions.  David is a member of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Centre deciding domain name disputes between parties, is a .EU panellist with the Czech Arbitration Court and has written extensively on domain name issues including the launch of .EU.

What does Anchovy, the Lovells Domain Name Practice do? 

It protects brands on the Internet.
 
Intellectual property rights are at risk on the Internet.  With over 500 ICANN domain name registrars, approximately 200 countries allowing country code top level domain name registrations, and over 80 million domain names registered worldwide, protecting clients' online presence is vital to the current and future development of brands.  The reflection of key brands, trade marks and company names online is more than just registering a .com domain name.  There are some 243 country code top level domain names (ccTLDS) available, each providing the registrant with a global reach.  The fact of constantly changing registration requirements in ccTLD registries combined with the many and varied dispute resolution procedures makes the effective management of brands online increasingly complex.  The Lovells Domain Name Practice offers a comprehensive and global online brand protection service to its clients comprising domain name registration, management and protection using secure dedicated domain name servers.