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 The Russian Registry recently announced the release of IDN domain names under .РФ (the Cyrillic ccTLD for the Russia Federation) from November 25, 2009 to March 25, 2010 (Sunrise Domain Registrations) for owners of Cyrillic Russian trade marks. Prior to this most recent development governments, companies and individuals could register domain names based on different languages only in Latin transliteration. The current Internet domain system will go much further by allowing Cyrillic characters in a URL. |
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 From 10 December 2009, companies and private persons based in the European Union will be able to register .eu Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs). IDNs are domain names that contain non-ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) characters. Computers only recognize numbers, so the ASCII code was developed as a sequential formula for representing characters as numbers. This is the most common code for text on computers. In common usage, ASCII means a text file that doesn’t include any formatting (plain text). |
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 Facebook (the popular social networking website) has announced that it will, from 13 June 2009, allow its users to create personalized URLs for their Facebook pages. Trade mark owners have been granted the opportunity to prevent their trade mark from being registered as a username by submitting details of their trade mark registration to Facebook, Inc. through its trade mark protection contact form, available at: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights |
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 In a judgment handed down on 27 November 2008 in King vs SA Weather Service (716/2007), the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa has held in favour of the Respondent, the South African Weather Service, in a case involving alleged infringement by it of the copyright of the Appellant in certain weather-related computer programs. |
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 The website domain name mixit.co.za was recently the subject of a dispute and some confusion has arisen about the implications of the ruling. This article is intended to clear up misconceptions. |
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 On 26 June 2008, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”), an international, non profit, private-public partnership responsible for the administration of the internet, accepted a recommendation to expand the current generic Top Level Domain (TLD) names. Currently, there are limited numbers of TLDs available wherein businesses or individuals can register domain names. The most common current TLDs include .com, .net, .org etc. Since the original seven domain “dots” were established, ICANN has expanded the number of TLDs rarely and only by a handful each time. |
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 The Pan-Asiatic and Asian Pacific community has set out to build a stage of their own in what has fast become the economic, social and political theatre of the human race. |
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 The very first case in which a cyber squatter was ordered to transfer a .co.za domain name to a South African brand owner has just been handed down. The complainant was Telkom SA Limited. The domain name |
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 Advanced ADR workshop to be presented by speakers from Nominet UK and WIPO over 2 days in Sandton, Johannesburg. |
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Cybersquatting as such, is not uncommon in South Africa. However, until very recently, anybody who wanted to object to a domain name in the .co.za name space, had no option but to institute proceedings in the High Court. |
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In terms of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, Act no. 25 of 2002, the Minister of Communications promulgated Alternative Dispute Resolution regulations in November 2006. The regulations, which have now come into force, relate only to domain names registered in the second level country code domain, .co.za. |
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The .asia domain was proposed to ICANN to represent the unified Asian market, much like .eu has done for the European Union. |
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E-commerce offers significant advantages which may contribute significantly to a franchise business. These include a wider audience, improved logistics, reduced costs, improved efficiency, new sales and global branding. |
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The firm practises directly in several Southern African countries and through long-established associates in others.
