Deluge of new top-level domains flood Web with opportunities, risks

Lawyers' Forum

By Anne E. Naffziger and Michelle L. Zimmermann

Anne E. Naffziger is a member at Leydig, Voit & Mayer’s California Bay Area office. She practices trademark, trade dress, unfair competition, copyright and trade secret law, including trademark clearance and prosecution, policing and enforcement, and litigation.

Michelle L. Zimmermann is an associate at Leydig, Voit & Mayer’s Chicago office. She practices in intellectual property issues, including trademark and trade dress prosecution and litigation, copyright law, unfair competition law and Internet law.

Posted December 4, 2014 2:44 PM

Recently, a law firm working on behalf of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg bought up hundreds of potentially defamatory domain names such as bloombergisaweiner.nyc and mrbloombergsucks.nyc. But it is not just politicians — pizza places, consumer services businesses, funeral homes, real estate agents, and more are all buying dot-nyc domain names. More than 50,000 domain names have already been registered for one of the world’s newest generic top-level domain names. By now, more than 400 new …

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