Can somebody tell me something about the legalities behind .com and .net domains? I have registered two domains which I intent to use for some critical or satirical political content. One (.com), which is the same the surname as a prominent politician in Denmark. The surname in itself is not very common – but not I’d think exclusive to that family. The other domain (.net) is the same as a major political party (of which the above mentioned person is the president). Can I legally hold on to these domains, or can they try to force me to relinquish them?
Anyone can try to force you to relinquish the name but success is another matter. Do a search on domain name squatting. I think the results will depend a lot on particular circumstances and your own intentions. This article in Forbes looked interesting and has some info about jurisdiction.
And here is a fun article about the outskirts of cyber-squatting law. The article discusses a situation similar to yours. You can’t cyber-squat unless you intend to profit from someone else’s trademark (in your case, it is a name, and is not trademarked, but I’m just showing you what’s out there). If you intend to parody a company, and don’t want to sell anything by using their good will, US cyber-squatting law does not apply.
Just out of curiosity, where would such disputes be handled? I mean, in an extreme case, the person complaining and the current domain holder and the registering company as well as the web-hotel all might reside in different countries, where would it then be brought to court?
re your last question: when registering your .com and .net domains you signed up to the Uniform Domain Name
Dispute Resolution Policy which offers an international mechanism for trademark/service mark holders whose rights you violated to get the domain from you. This does not seem to be applicable in this case as no trade marks are concerned.
In your case, however, it seems to me (IANAL) that the injured parties just have to sue you in a Danish court under whatever law applies in Denmark to the protection of persons’ and other entities’ names, that any ruling can be readily enforced against you in Denmark, and that US/international law on cybersquatting does not come into the equation.
But what if I were British or Australian or from some other country. Could I still be tried under Danish law? If I find that my company name or surname, quite unique in Denmark, has been registered (as a .com domain) by some person in the US, does it follow I have a case against him? It doesn’t seem right that I can sue some man in California under Danish law for some infringement that may be legal in the US – or even were it also illegal in the US that he could be forced to defend himself in a Danish court.
This is a very complicated question. It is one of personal jurisdiction. And you could raise it in either court, possibly with different results. Could you be sued in Denmark? I don’t know the first thing about Danish law, so I’m gonna guess. Yes. In most jurisdictions, lack of personal jurisdiction is an affirmative defense. You have to raise it. So you probably *could * be sued in Denmark. If you appeared and raised the defense of lack of personal jurisdiction, I have no idea how the Danish court would come out on the issue.
The next issue would be choice of law. What law would the Danish court apply to the dispute. Again, I don’t know anything about Danish choice-of-law rules, so I won’t be much help. The Danish court certainly could apply Danish law to the dispute. If it applied US law, it looks like you would probably win. I don’t know what kinds of laws Denmark has on the subject.
Ok. So if you didn’t appear in Denmark, and the Danish court entered a default judgment against you, the plaintiff would then have to enforce the judgment in a US court. They would have to show that the Danish court allowed you the substantial equivalent of due process. Due process includes a proper assertion of personal jurisdiction. So the US court could well find the Danish default judgment to be unenforceable.
Here is an article talking about international personal jurisdiction in internet cases.