news Unstoppable Domains threatens rival Handshake domain name

[bmugford]

So much for "decentralized"... Using the TM and legal system to push a highly dubious claim, at best.


https://domainnamewire.com/2022/07/20/unstoppable-domains-threatens-rival-handshake-domain-name/

Blockchain domain name company Unstoppable Domains has threatened to sue a Handshake domain name service for offering registrations under the .wallet Handshake domain name.

The company sent a cease & desist letter (PDF) to Gateway.io, a company that acts as a registry and registrar for Handshake domain names, earlier this month.

The registrant of .wallet created the Handshake domain on July 31, 2020. Unstoppable Domains began offering its own .wallet domains in summer 2021.

 

[bmugford]

Update: Unstoppable Domains sues over Handshake .wallet domain​

https://domainnamewire.com/2022/07/20/update-unstoppable-domains-sues-over-handshake-wallet-domain/

"Unstoppable Domains is on a mission to decentralize the web."

What a joke. A company that was not even the first to offer a .wallet blockchain domain is suing another.

The entire "decentralized" argument flies out the window with this bullshit lawsuit.

How it is decentralized for one company, that wasn't even the first, to try to block competition from others via (ungranted) TMs and the legal system?

I am no handshake supporter, in fact I am not really interested in any of these pseudo-extensions, but the entire premise of this lawsuit is nonsense.

Additionally, ICANN should not and will not care about this BS either and will delegate the extensions as they have done in the past.

Brad

 

[Keith]

Not sure if this is the owner of .wallet or they’re just confused? https://www.namepros.com/threads/gaming-wallet.1278713/#post-8654104

@DomainKings2 references the HNS domain gaming.wallet but I have to believe it’s the unstoppable version.

My take very early on was that these “decentralized” extensions could be duplicated endless times. There could be many .wallet in existence and if truly off the grid, unstoppable can’t do a thing about it.

In this case I don’t believe unstoppable has a leg to stand on. Also, if handshake deletes or gives .wallet to the complainant the entire decentralized idea and the hns platform are a fraud and completely bogus.

 

[kor]

 

[HotKey]

From The Shake, a weekly publication on Handshake news, on this issue in particular:

The top level domain .wallet is one of ten TLDs also offered by Unstoppable Domains, Inc (UD). The success of .wallet’s initial name offering on Handshake led UD to respond by sending Gateway.io a “cease and desist” letter. Gateway does not intend to stand down here, and it turns out that UD’s trademark application for the mark “.wallet” was declined anyways.

A “cease and desist” is a tactic of a centralized organization. A for-profit company that arbitrarily chooses TLDs to issue domains under and responds to competition through legal threats is not in line with the goal of decentralizing DNS chokepoints, as it should be here. UD is acting as a mini-ICANN wanting to play arbiter of truth.

You can send a “cease and desist” letter to a domain registry, but you can’t send one to Handshake itself. Blockchains are anti-fragile in that sense — .wallet will always exist in the Handshake root. If UD were to buy their TLDs on Handshake, they could map them to their existing namespaces. Otherwise, in the case of .wallet, we get name collisions.

Ultimately, the issue of name collisions gets pushed up the stack to DNS resolvers. Both independent resolvers and browser-operated resolvers will choose which namespace to prioritize and users can opt for whichever aligns with their preferences. In a free market, let the best namespace win.

Essentially Handshake TLD owners have the ability to control their names on their own without dependency on a registry, thus providing a sort of immunity to these types of hostile domain takeovers. I don't believe UD domain owners have that capacity.

 

[bmugford]

John Berryhill has some good comments in the thread -

John Berryhill says
July 21, 2022 at 1:50 am
These folks are determined to replicate the entirety of alt-root history, right down to Image Online Design, Inc. v. Core Ass’n, 120 F. Supp. 2d 870 (C.D. Cal. 2000).
We’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends.

John Berryhill says
July 21, 2022 at 4:40 am
A remarkable tendency of the blockchain domain promoters is a remarkable unfamiliarity with well-trod ground by the alt-root operators in the pre- and early ICANN days. This sort of “trademark claim in a TLD based on first use” was taken out for a spin in court a few times, and failed every time. e.g. Image Online Design, Inc. v. Core Ass’n, 120 F. Supp. 2d 870 (C.D. Cal. 2000)
Other than the limited case of in-house TLDs which are used by an existing brand, the notion of a domain registry owning a trademark right in a TLD offered for general use by others flunks the basic test of “what is a trademark”. A trademark, in the most basic sense, is a signifier of the source or origin of goods or services. The trademark tells a consumer “this stuff comes from the same place as other stuff bearing this mark.” The entire point of offering registration services in a TLD is to provide a mechanism for ANYONE to use the TLD (in combination with their own second-level name) to identify their stuff.
To put it another way – where does stuff having “.com” on it come from? It could come from anywhere. Retail services from Amazon.com comes from Amazon. Retail services from Alibaba.com come from Alibaba. Streaming video from Youtube.com and Netflix.com come from different places. Two things should be obvious from these examples. First, “.com” does not distinguish the source of any goods or services provided from a “.com” address. That is why it was analogized to the “800” in US toll-free telephone numbers in early domain name trademark cases. Second, nobody thinks of “.com” as signifying goods or services emanating from Verisign. While Verisign does indeed run the .com registry, that technical function does not translate into a “.com” trademark for registration services any more than “telephone” worked as a trademark for the Bell System back when the US had a monopoly provider of telephone services.

 

[topdom]

They will both lose.

 

[Keith]

They will both lose.

Maybe not the hns .wallet owner. However, I’ve struggled with these. Is it .wallet or .wallet/ ?

All hns extensions end with /

I own .ev but is it .ev/? Big difference!

 

[HotKey]

It's a moot point now anyways Keith, Beacon browser resolves either or. As long as you have your TLD going to a site, the forward-slash isn't necessary. I hope Opera follows suit, less confusion.

I know you weren't a fan of the "/" but I use it on listings and lander images because it makes HNS domains kind of stand apart from the Web3 noise and creates recognition.

You don't need to put a dot before your TLD btw. Unless obviously you have domain like drive.ev that you want to resolve instead.

 

[DomainKings2]

My gaming(.)wallet is a handshake domain. It's from gateway(.io) Definitely not an Unstoppable domain

 

[topdom]

It may be an artificial thing invented for publicity: "web3 domains are worth fighting for" (people would think). This story may appear in finance magazines, and it would count as free ad.

FB was a new thing, and I saw "news" about it, and they were smelling like promotion.
I said to myself "why care about FB".. And it proved to be a D*RPA project made under
a trillionaire's grandson's name.

 

[bmugford]

Outside the actual premise and merits of the lawsuit, how about the logistical issues?

There are multiple wallet "extensions" at the moment on different blockchains. So how could any even be consolidated?

You would have different people who own bitcoin.wallet for instance, on different blockchains or services.

What are you going to do just be like oh, sorry and take someone's domain.

How could they even physically be transferred? Aren't all these blockchain domains supposed to be untouchable permanent assets?

The lawsuit fails on premise.
It fails on merits.
It fails on precedent.
It fails on logistics.
It fails on common sense.

It especially fails on "decentralization".

Brad

 

[Arjun Oli]

I think TM will be joke after web 3 launch

 

[Bname.com]

my gad

 

[jhm]

Yeah. you're right Brad. So much for decentralization. Companies are happy to throw around that word, but when it comes to business interests, they don't want to delegate that control away from themselves

 

[Reyal]

lol decentralization my a*s those gtlds are not decentralization

 

[Helmuts]

hummm.. interesting.. tx

.. now we see why ICANN is needed

 

[Helmuts]

Yeah. you're right Brad. So much for decentralization. Companies are happy to throw around that word, but when it comes to business interests, they don't want to delegate that control away from themselves

:D :D

+1

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Via DomainNameWire:
https://domainnamewire.com/2022/08/...-against-counterfeit-handshake-wallet-domain/

Sounds like they want exclusivity on whatever money printing machine they think they have stumbled upon...

Funny how companies go from being hell bent on innovation to being captivated by domination isn't it.

 

[bmugford]

"Decentralized"...

Their entire argument makes the case for centralization.