The Clash of Trademarks, Volume 1
Tracing the rise of a tailored, bottom-up domain-name jurisprudence that separates actionable cybersquatting from overreaching claims, the author Gerald M. Levine maps not just trademark-owner victories but also lawful defenses and limits. If cybersquatting were mere “checklist law,” he argues, the book wouldn’t be worth writing—what matters is the nuanced ±5% where disputes are won.
The book opens by framing the commercialization of the Internet and its unanticipated consequences, then moves quickly into the legal architecture that emerged to restore order: WIPO’s policy work, key features of the UDRP and ACPA, and the choice of the UDRP as a non-exclusive remedy. Early chapters walk you through jurisdiction and procedure (including mutual jurisdiction, UDRP Rule 4(k), and the right to challenge forfeitures), and surface critical practicalities such as GDPR’s impact on WHOIS and party identification. A step-by-step outline of the arbitral process and filings makes the machinery usable.
Later chapters address what today’s practitioners observe most: the rise of the secondary market in domain names, the boundaries between legitimate investment and abuse, and the evidentiary and timing issues that accompany dropped, expired, or re-registered domains. You’ll find practical analysis on “domain names as business assets,” pricing dynamics, and the “speculation-is-abusive” meme—essential context when negotiating, pleading, or defending.
For litigators, the ACPA chapters are a masterclass: why Congress chose a disjunctive liability model (“registers, traffics in, or uses”), how courts apply bad-faith factors, what “intent to profit” means in practice, and how circuit splits over registration date versus creation date affect strategy. Levine pairs doctrine with docket-level realities—business disputes that fall outside the ACPA, challenges to UDRP awards, fraudulent transfers, and remedies (including the recurring questions around statutory damages).
Across the book, Levine writes with the perspective of someone who has watched the “Wild West” of the 1990s give way to a mature, predictable body of law since the 1999 adoption of the UDRP and ACPA—exactly the jurisprudence busy lawyers need at their fingertips.