Academic Papers of Curtis M. Kularski

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Harms of Intellectual Property Protections in Internet Namespaces

Master's Research Paper PHIL 6999
Master of Arts in Ethics and Applied Philosophy Spring 2018

Abstract

The linguistic territory of the Internet, the domain name system, has recently undergone a large-scale expansion and you can claim a piece of it for yourself in the form of a domain name. This is exciting news for bloggers, photographers, artists, writers and anyone else who has or wants an online presence that previously struggled to find the perfect name in dot-COM! There is one catch however, you may be blocked from getting the perfect name in one of the new domains if it is similar to someone else's trademark or you may be able to register your new domain name but have it taken away later because a corporation demonstrated they had a prior legal claim to it, even if you were not aware of their trademark.

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