Articles
Case Study: GoPets v. Hise
Law360
November 15, 2011
Kelly, David M.
Article
This article by Finnegan partner David M. Kelly, discusses the case GoPets V. Hise. This is a case in which the defendant registered the domain name gopets.com in 1999 and planned to use it to provide information about pet care and the plaintiff created GoPets in 2004, as an online game featuring virtual pets. The author provides a summary and the facts of the case along with an analysis of the case decision. The author concludes that “the decision is of particular interest because it appears to create a split between the Ninth and Third Circuits on whether a transfer of a domain name constitutes a new registration for purposes of evaluating a cybersquatting claim under the ACPA, and that this distinction could make the difference between winning and losing a cybersquatting claim.”
This article was originally published in the October 2011 issue of Finnegan’s Incontestable newsletter. To read the full article, please click here.