Emmanuel Gillet

Domain Name Management

.music sunrise period. The wait is over!

Announced for more than a decade and long delayed, the .MUSIC extension finally arrives: its sunrise period opens on 11 August 2023 and runs until 13 November 2023, before general availability. During this window, trademark owners whose marks are recorded in the Trademark Clearinghouse can register the corresponding names with priority. For the music industry — artists, labels, publishers, venues, platforms — but also for any brand exposed to musical uses of its name, the advice is the usual one: secure the key names during the sunrise period rather than pay later, through negotiation or proceedings, for names captured by opportunists. IP Twins can assist right holders with these registrations.

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Domain Name Management

.WATCHES domain names: be on time!

Identity Digital — born of the merger of Afilias and Donuts, and the largest gTLD registry operator — is launching the .WATCHES extension: sunrise period from 28 March to 27 May 2023, reserved for trademarks recorded in the Trademark Clearinghouse, before opening to the public. For watchmaking houses and retailers, an extension that says the product in a word deserves consideration in the portfolio — both to build addresses that speak to customers and to deprive counterfeiters, whose appetite for the sector is well documented, of names combining a brand with .WATCHES. Be on time: registering during the sunrise period costs little; recovering a squatted name later costs much more. IP Twins accompanies brand owners through the operation.

New gTLDs · Online Brand Protection

20 March 2023

Initially published on iptwins.com

Domain Name Management

Cybersecurity and Log4shell: the situation at IP Twins

On 10 December 2021, researchers disclosed Log4Shell, a critical vulnerability in Log4j, the ubiquitous Java logging library. The article documents IP Twins' immediate assessment, offering registrar clients transparency: the core systems — Domainarium 2, the EPP tools and the DNS architecture — contain no Java and are therefore not exposed. Only two resources use Java: the third-party database supporting domain name registration monitoring, and the VMware solutions supplied by hosting partner OVH for private cloud management; both sit behind strict IP whitelisting, reachable only from IP Twins' internal addresses, which forecloses external exploitation. After full technical verification, the company confirmed that neither its registrar services nor its nameservers were at risk, and invited clients to contact support with any questions. A model of the prompt, factual communication expected from infrastructure providers when a major vulnerability breaks.

16 December 2021

Initially published on iptwins.com

Third-Party Liability

Lacoste v Shein: When a Platform Can No Longer Hide Behind Hosting Status

A platform is not one legal object. In Lacoste v Roadget Business Pte. Ltd. and Infinite Styles Services Co. Ltd. (Paris, Pôle 5 ch. 1, 8 July 2026, RG 25/12454), the Court of Appeal refused to let the operators of shein.com shelter behind the hosting exemption of Article 6 of the Digital Services Act: goods “sold by Shein”, Shein labels and packaging, and the Commission’s designation of the service as a very large online platform revealed a hybrid activity, and the characterisation attached not to the platform as a whole but to the role actually played in the disputed transactions. The judgment reaches beyond the twenty offending products. “Lacoste”, typed into the internal search engine, infringes the word marks; “crocodile”, a free word, grounds unfair competition and parasitism. Interim damages rise from €30,000 to €300,000 — the defendants’ own failure to disclose their turnover counting against them — and the measures run across the European Union.

Counterfeiting · Court Litigation · European Digital Law · Marketplace Enforcement · Trademark Law

28 August 2026

Initially published on iptwins.com

Domain Name Law

COSHIELD: The Scope of the UDRP in Trademark Disputes

Not every dispute involving a trade mark and a domain name amounts to cybersquatting. In Polyco Healthline Limited v. David Beatson (WIPO Case No. D2026-1893), the panelist denied the complaint brought against coshield.com, a domain used since 2020 to sell personal protective equipment in the very sector where the complainant has exploited its SHIELD trade mark since 1997, and despite a settlement agreement concluded between the parties in 2021. The decision turns on the moment of acquisition: created in 2014, the domain name appears to have changed hands in May 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the combination of “Co” and “Shield” could describe the business rather than target Polyco. The evidence being “finely balanced”, bad faith was not established. This article examines why trade mark infringement and cybersquatting are two paths that do not necessarily converge.

Cybersquatting · Domain Name Law · Trademark Law · UDRP

23 August 2026

Initially published on iptwins.com

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Article Information

Author

Emmanuel Gillet

Publication Date

1 August 2023

Jurisdiction

Topics

New gTLDs · Online Brand Protection

Industry

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