United States: Jurisdiction For Enforcing Domain Name Rights

The question of where to file a lawsuit against a person or entity engaged in cybersquatting often provided a confounding situation for parties whose trade names or marks had been misappropriated. Often times, so-called cybersquatters were geographically removed from the jurisdiction of the aggrieved person or entity. Sometimes they could not be found at all if they used false or fraudulent information to obtain registration.

In Rem Proceedings

On November 29, 1999, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (Act) became law. Under this Act, the "owner of a mark" may bring what is known as an in rem action against a domain name if the domain name violates any right of the owner of a registered or protected mark. The words in rem describe a lawsuit brought to enforce rights in a thing against the whole world as opposed to a more traditional type of lawsuit brought to enforce rights against another person, known as an in personam lawsuit.

The Act allows for in rem proceedings to be brought if the court finds that the owner either is not able to obtain in personam jurisdiction over an allowed defendant or through due diligence was not able to find a person who would have been an allowed defendant after meeting certain notice requirements of the Act. An in rem proceeding may be brought in the judicial district where the domain name is registered, where the domain name registry is located or the location of the other domain name registrar who registered or assigned the domain name.

Consitutionality

Although the question of the constitutionality of this type of jurisdiction is far from fully resolved, it has passed constitutional muster on at least one occasion. In Caesars World, Inc. v. Caesars-Palace.com, two defendants who had been sued over their registration of a mark, argued that the in rem jurisdiction was unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to them. The trial court decided on March 3, 2000 that the registration of the domain names with Network Solutions in Virginia was a meaningful enough contact between the Commonwealth of Virginia and the domain names to make that court’s exercise of in rem jurisdiction constitutional.

The defendants in that case also argued that a domain name was too much of an intangible to be considered a "thing" for purposes of this jurisdictional analysis. The court also rejected this argument by finding that Congress in enacting the Act elevated "mere … data that forms part of an Internet address computer protocol" into property worthy of legal protection and subject to legal proceedings.

This is just the first of what will certainly be many cases raising similar claims and constitutional challenges. To the extent that an aggrieved party is faced with the prospect of a defendant who is outside of the jurisdiction of a particular court or cannot be found at all, at least there is a possible forum for adjudicating rights to the domain name.