NIPC Law

ICANN Head Office in Los Angeles Photo  Coolcaesar Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence Source  Wikipedia Jane Lambert A domain name is a mnemonic for an internet address, that is to say a long string of numbers that identifies a website, mailbox or other resource. Since they are used to identify businesses, government departments, international agencies, universities and other institutions they can be very valuable assets.  They can be registered for one or more years for a few pounds, euro or dollars without extensive checks or formalities on a first come first served basis. Those who apply to register domain names have to warrant and represent to their domain name registrar that they are entitled to register those names in their registration agreements.  They are also required to agree to refer any complaint by a trade mark or other intellectual property right owner that they are not so entitled to a form of altern...

Although some such as George Monbiot do not approve of it (see "This transatlantic trade deal is a full-frontal assault on democracy" 4 Nov 2013 The Guardian ) and many quite politically aware people are not even aware of it, negotiators from the United States and European Union have been hammering out a deal to create a North Atlantic Free Trade Area. If they succeed they will create a market of 800 million of the richest consumers on earth which should increase the GDP of all the countries in the arrangement enormously. An early discussion draft can be inspected here  and news of the latest negotiations can be gleaned from the press conference above. One of the reasons why Mr Monbiot does not like the deal is that disputes between businesses and governments will be determined not by the Court of Justice of the European Union or a national court but by arbitration as happens already under Chapter II of the North American Free Trade Agreement and a large number of bil...