Garnishing Domain Names: Are They Contracts or Property?
Gerald M. Levine writes: It is obvious that domain names play two different roles in the Internet ecology. If they are simply and no more than contracts for services enabling Internet connections, they would not be garnishable. But if they are property, they are. The role that elevates them to property results from their range of economic activity in that ecology.
April 08, 2015 at 12:03 PM
11 minute read
In the mid-1990s, domain names were seen primarily as addresses in cyberspace—much like telephone numbers or postal addresses to which they were analogized—rather than as assets of value in themselves. It quickly became apparent, however, that domain names could acquire a separate and independent value created by their active participation in the cyber marketplace.
In their functional role domain names are simply a string of alpha-numeric characters that connect visitors to destinations in cyberspace. By simply typing the domain name into the browser search field users effect completion of the link. There is nothing unlawful in monetizing domain names or offering them for sale as long as they are not found to be infringing third-party rights by cybersquatting on virtual space reserved to trademark owners.
A federal court sitting in Virginia before enactment of the now current remedial measures to combat cybersquatting, in Dorer v. Arel, 60 F.Supp.2d 558 (E.D. Va. 1999), presciently opined that domain names can be “extremely valuable to Internet entrepreneurs.” This would seem to point the way to a holding that domain names were garnishable assets, but this was not the case.
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