If a website is found to infringe a brand owner’s IP rights, how much liability can be laid at the registry’s feet? TBO looks at the interesting situation confronting Nominet, the .uk domain registry.
To an extent, this theory can be applied to a domain name registry, which provides access to a web address but does not take the blame for rogue behaviour on that site.
But when a website is found to infringe intellectual property rights, how much blame can be levied on the registry?
That question has been posed by a dispute between Cartier, the French watch and jewellery designer, and Nominet, the registry for .uk domain names. Nominet has more than 10 million .uk domain names in its portfolio; other registries, including Verisign, which manages the .com top-level domain (TLD), have many more to manage.
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branding, Nominet, Cartier, counterfeit, trademark infringement, Whois
