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Archive for January, 2011

We have recently seen some high profile domain names that haven’t been renewed by registrants.

Much of the time domain names are not renewed because they are no longer required, but on occasion, the registrant contact email is not updated after an employee leaves a business or a business stops using an email address.

Recently, Bunnings forgot to renew hardware.com.au, which was quickly snapped up by Woolworths, presumably for use in their hardware business. In this case, the registrant email address was not valid, which is likely to be the reason that the domain name was not renewed.

The consequences of this may be catastrophic for a business, but it need not happen.

Here are some simple tips to avoid your domain name accidentally expiring:

1. use generic email addresses as the registrant contact address, which forward emails to multiple people in an organisation;
2. diarise the expiry date of your domains;
3. maintain a consolidated intellectual property register which contains details of all of your valuable intellectual property such as domain names and trademarks;
4. use an automatic renewal function – most registrars have this service available, just ask;

In almost all cases, simply following these tips will help you avoid expiry. Remember once a domain name expires it becomes available (after a grace period) for registration by anyone else including your competitors. Protect it or lose it!

Domain name lawyers like Cooper Mills are constantly helping clients recover domain names, but prevention is better than cure….

Tags: domain law, domain lawyers, domain name, domain name law, domain name lawyers
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We recently saw hardware.com.au snapped up by Bunnings rival Woolworths after they failed to renew the highly sought after domain, and today was SPI’s turn, failing to renew electricity.com.au which achieved a sale price of $31,000 at auction.

According to its website, SPI Electricity & Gas Australia, part of the large Singapore Power Group, operates the transmission networks for gas and electricity in Victoria, and boasts an electricity network of 6500km.

The successful bidder was Pacific Octane, an online media group who acquired electricity.com.au in spirited bidding today for $31,000.

Domain names are of critical importance to business both on and off line, and business needs to value and protect intellectual property rights.

Cooper Mills Director, IT and Domain Name Lawyer, Erhan Karabardak said that “Intellectual property, including its protection should be a critical part of any business strategy. This is even more important, as most businesses and consumers now carry on business not just in their local area, but globally via the internet.“

Tags: business law, domain law, domain lawyers, domain name law, domain name lawyers, electricity.com.au, IT Law
Posted in Domain law and domaining, General, IT Law | Comments Off