Luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and remove from “all internet search engines”.
The case has been a remarkable one. Concerned about counterfeiting, Chanel has filed a joint suit in Nevada against nearly 700 domain names that appear to have nothing in common.
How were the sites investigated? Chanel hired an investigator, and others were seized based on an anti-counterfeiting specialist.
Missing from the ruling is any discussion of the Internet’s global nature; the judge shows no awareness that the domains in question might not even be registered in this country, and his ban on search engine and social media indexing apparently extends to the entire world.
The US government has made similar domain name seizures through Operation In Our Sites, even when the sites are located abroad. Such moves by themselves would seem to do little to stop piracy in the long-term; they simply teach would-be miscreants to register future domain names in other countries.
Read more details on this case at arstechnica.
Tags: brand, Chanel, Social media
