Manara, Cédric --- "THE COMPLEXITIES OF DOMAIN NAMES TRANSACTIONS: CONTRACTS FOR A MARKET WHERE VALUE INCREASES WITH TIME" [2016] ELECD 357; in Calboli, Irene; de Werra, Jacques (eds), "The Law and Practice of Trademark Transactions" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 82

Book Title: The Law and Practice of Trademark Transactions

Editor(s): Calboli, Irene; de Werra, Jacques

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783472123

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: THE COMPLEXITIES OF DOMAIN NAMES TRANSACTIONS: CONTRACTS FOR A MARKET WHERE VALUE INCREASES WITH TIME

Author(s): Manara, Cédric

Number of pages: 16

Abstract/Description:

There were 284 million domain names registered in October 2014. There is also an active secondary market where companies or investors are looking for domain names to buy or to lease. On platforms dedicated to this secondary market, the transactions are usually simple: parties obey to the terms of use and/or use a template provided by the platform, with the intermediary sometimes offering the additional service of escrowing the payment. Practice shows that the percentage of agreements drafted by lawyers is very low compared to the overall number of domain names that change hands or are licensed through these platforms. A domain is usually defined as a set of addresses which are managed in common. All the names ending in ‘.us,’ for example, form a domain. All the blogs hosted on the WordPress platform have a common Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that ends with ‘.wordpress.com,’ which also forms a domain. The allocation of a domain name to a user is a naming operation. A domain is usually managed by an entity from which the creation of a name must be obtained. This entity creates a new entry in a database, which is a technical condition for the name to exist. In some cases the entity creates names for itself; generally, names are born after a third party asks the naming entity to be granted a domain name.