Emmanuel Gillet

“Crystal vision” c. “Crystal visual”: no confusion

Two competing opticians, one dispute over a sign's strength. The owner of the 'Cristal vision' trademark and the cristal-vision.fr domain sued a competitor which, after a first cease-and-desist, had shifted from 'Crystal vision' to 'Crystal visual' and applied to register that mark. In its judgment of 22 March 2022 (No. 20/12339), the Paris Judicial Court rejected the registration application yet declined to prohibit use of 'Crystal visual'. The reasoning is a textbook lesson in distinctiveness: the earlier mark, built on largely descriptive elements, enjoys only a narrow scope of protection, and an attentive public will perceive the differences — the orthographic quirk of the 'y' and the absence of the purely descriptive word 'vision'. The article draws the practical moral: the strength of a trademark determines the perimeter of what it can forbid, and descriptive marks make fragile weapons against neighbouring signs.

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Brand and trademark infringement on Twitter

By turning verification into a product — the blue badge for eight dollars a month with Twitter Blue, without real authentication — Twitter dismantled overnight the very signal that used to distinguish authentic accounts from impostors. The consequences were immediate: a fake George W. Bush account collected thousands of retweets; 'verified' accounts impersonated Apple, Nestlé, Tesla and SpaceX, publishing fake announcements with massive engagement; others directed users to phishing sites promising free verification through wallet authentication. Where the badge once reassured, it now lends credibility to fraud at a trivial cost. The article draws the operational consequences for brand owners: strengthen social listening, monitor handles and lookalikes as closely as domain names, report impersonations promptly through the platforms' procedures, and treat social networks as a full component of anti-phishing and brand-protection programmes.

Online Brand Protection · Phishing · Social Media Enforcement · Trademark Law

16 November 2022

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The geographical name of national importance: common good or private monopoly?

The France.com case made an impression — it may also mark a turning point in the legal regime of geographical names of national importance. International law offers them little: Article 6ter of the Paris Convention protects flags and emblems, not country names, and TRIPS is silent. Since the 2000s and the rise of nation branding, states have claimed sovereign control over their names: ICANN’s GAC recommended in 2007 avoiding the registration of country names, and Specification 5 subjects them, in the new gTLDs, to government consent — though of 94 states concerned, only ten have expressly waived their reservation. The Cour de cassation’s ruling of 6 April 2022, making the name “France” an element of the State’s identity, strengthens the sovereign reading. Blockchain extensions such as .ETH, beyond any of these safeguards, reopen the whole question — common good or private monopoly?

Domain Name Law · ICANN · Trademark Law

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Initially published on iptwins.com

Domain Name Governance

DNS Abuse: How Can Domain Names Linked to the Same Actor Be Connected?

On 18 August 2026, ICANN published for public comment the Initial Report of its DNS Abuse Mitigation Policy Development Process (PDP 1). Among its proposals are Associated Domain Checks: when a registrar acts on an abuse report, it should also examine the other domain names held by the same customer. In its comments of 25 September 2026, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center supports the approach but points out its main limitation: the checks stop at the edge of a single registrar's portfolio. Bad actors know this and spread their registrations across several registrars, which hampers consolidated UDRP proceedings. WIPO suggests exploring cross-registrar mechanisms without saying which data could link the names. The article argues that payment data, pseudonymised, could serve as that common denominator, while acknowledging its limits (prepaid cards, fraud, multiple payment methods): an indicator rather than proof. It marks a shift from a one-domain, one-investigation logic to a network approach.

Cybersecurity · Cybersquatting · Domain Name Law · Domain Name System · ICANN · Online Brand Protection · UDRP

28 September 2026

Initially published on iptwins.com

Blockchain & Law

DNS and Web3: How Can We Avoid Importing Cryptosquatting into the DNS?

The DNS and blockchain-based alternative naming systems are converging, with projects such as .BLOCKCHAIN and the .ROBOT cryptoTLD seeking to operate the same string in both worlds. In August 2026, ICANN's Technical Study Group released an Initial Report on integrating gTLDs with alternative naming systems, built on a "string + controller" principle: the same name must remain under the same control across systems, with its status kept in sync. In September 2026, the SSAC supported this synchronisation but noted that applying the UDRP and the URS becomes difficult when a registrant exists only in an alternative system, without conventional registration data. The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center warns that cybersquatting is already widespread in these systems: mapping names automatically into the DNS would import existing infringements. Trademark owners therefore need functionally equivalent protection mechanisms, including a way to prevent infringing names from being activated, as initiatives like Unstoppable Domains joining GlobalBlock have begun to show.

Blockchain · Cybersquatting · Domain Name System · ICANN · New gTLDs · Online Brand Protection · UDRP · URS · Web3 Domains

24 September 2026

Initially published on iptwins.com

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Article Information

Author

Emmanuel Gillet

Publication Date

16 May 2022

Jurisdiction

Topics

Court Litigation · Trademark Law

Industry

Related Decision(s)

20/12339Tribunal judiciaire de ParisTribunal judiciaire de Paris, 3e ch., 3e sect., 22 mars 2022, n° 20/12339, Cristal vision c. Crystal visual2022-03-22

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