by Traverse Legal, reviewed by Enrico Schaefer - June 7, 2007 - f. "Someone Stole My Domain Name" - Domain Theft & Hijacking
Most clients come to us because an employee, partner or other insider has stolen their domain name. Essentially, the insider takes control of the registrant login information and, thus, controls the use of the domain name and the DNS. Stolen domain names can occur in a variety of ways.
YourReview.us has reported that Enom, the domain name registration company, has justified the seizing of their own registrants names, with unsupportable claims of trademark violation.
Enom's software scripts run searches of their databases for the letters "enom." Though this search could discover many domain names that are in no violation of any trademark rights or agreement. Here is a quote from yourreview.us regarding the Enom matter.
“Apparently, every domain name containing the characters "enom" is being claimed by the mega registrar. No company can claim exclusive rights to a person's name or a word in general use. But, Enom is trying.
By not including a space before and after the characters "e-n-o-m," they hit words, and word combinations that were not infringing on their copyright and service mark. It seems that this is a case of automatic self-destruction complements of an incompetent legal staff.
We now know that potentially tens of thousands of innocent customers who registered domain names with Enom are now having their names unilaterally acquired by Enom without notice of any type, without anything in writing, without adequate explanation.
All customers got was a threatening email from Enom, stating that they had "infringed" upon Enom copyrights and that they would shut down their accounts (and their businesses) if customers "infringed" again.
According to their own user agreements, neither they (Enom), nor other parties have rights to transfer the ownership of a domain name owned by one of their customers. Apparently, the new rules allow registrars to take this action without review.
In a conversation with Enom's reseller manager (Joann), she stated that "90% of these are returned to the original customer…" but she had no idea why their acquisitions were so inaccurate.”
If you have been a victim of Enom's trademark violations or have had a domain name stolen from you, please contact an Internet lawyer at Traverse Legal for a free consultation.
As a founding partner of Traverse Legal, PLC, he has more than thirty years of experience as an attorney for both established companies and emerging start-ups. His extensive experience includes navigating technology law matters and complex litigation throughout the United States.
This page has been written, edited, and reviewed by a team of legal writers following our comprehensive editorial guidelines. This page was approved by attorney Enrico Schaefer, who has more than 20 years of legal experience as a practicing Business, IP, and Technology Law litigation attorney.
