Electric avenue

Sunrise, sunset

The Tokelau Islands domain name registry has announced the introduction of a sunrise period. It appears that while the islands have a population of only a thousand, 1.7million .tk domain names have been granted. Thus, until 3 December, only holders of trade marks will be able to apply for domain names, which will have to correspond with their trade marks.

The IPKat can’t quite understand the popularity of the .tk suffix. Is he missing something really obvious? The only reasons he can think of are (a) TK is an abbreviation for ‘traditional knowledge’ or more likely (b) at least some registration is free, in return for hosting advertising content on .tk sites.

Misaddressed emails lead to trade mark suit

Internetnews.com carries news of an interesting trade mark dispute between First Niagara Insurance Brokers (an insurance broker) and First Niagara Financial Group (a bank). The insurance broker uses the firstniagra.com domain name, and the bank uses first-niagra.com. The insurance broker claims that confused consumers of the bank have been wrongly emailing them. These emails often contain sensitive personal data, including bank details. There is no allegation that the information has been misused in any way.

The IPKat says that this is a strange case, since the effect of the insurance broker taking action is essentially to protect the bank’s customers. Having said that, it can’t be much fun for the broker to have to receive, and deal with, emails not intended for it.