search engines AltRoots search engine will monitor trademarks on the blockchain

[Acroplex]

A lot of folks believe Web3 is a free-for-all, Wild West gold rush opportunity regarding brands and domain names. Legal experts and brand owners disagree.

EnCirca has launched AltRoots, the first search engine created to monitor trademarks on the blockchain, providing a paid monitoring service to brand owners. More here.

 

[bmugford]

The average person is not someone who wants some wild west "decentralization" cluster fuck. Even if you are all in on Web3, there needs to be some normalization to avoid blatant abuse.

These are not quite as anonymous as some people seem to think. It is often not that hard to find who owns something either from exchanges or the blockchain itself.

The companies can just sue them in an actual court. They are subject to the same laws.

The companies will get a financial judgement, and if the other party refuses to pay they will likely be held in contempt and eventually thrown in jail.

These type of assets are not above the law and shielded from any liability.

Brad

 

[HotKey]

In a way, this could be viewed as a positive thing for Web3-based domains. It means it's being taken seriously, as a consideration for web movement. The concept is somewhat ironic, though. Blockchain domains aren't currently subject to this kind of control:

In March 2012, the US government declared that it has the right to seize any domains ending in .com, .net, .cc, .tv, .name and .org because the companies administering the domains are based in the US. The US government can seize the domains ending in .com, .net, .cc, .tv and .name by serving a court-order on VeriSign, which manages those domains. The .org domain is managed by the Virginia based non-profit Public Interest Registry. In March 2012, Verisign shut down the sports-betting site Bodog.com after receiving a court order, even though the domain name was registered to a Canadian company.

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It's likely only a matter of time before there is some sort of governance on the Web3, something like this mark monitoring service by EnCirca is certainly a reality check.