The technologies of the Internet age have spawned numerous new property rights, and as property rights evolve, methods of transferring those rights, both voluntarily and involuntarily, must evolve as well. One of the most visible property rights to emerge recently is the Internet domain name, the alphanumeric identifier that allows ordinary humans to find Web sites. Disputes over these names are already part of the business and legal literature, as in the early days of the Internet, speculators bought names in the hopes of transferring them for large sums of money to the companies that hold the trademarks to those names. While the law governing these cybersquatting disputes is developing rapidly, through both case law and statute, another area of "domain name law," that of creditors' rights in those names, is not. In this article, I explain the problems that a creditor who seeks an interest in a debtor's domain name might face and suggest some solutions to these problems. I will address both the plight of the unsecured creditor who seeks to enforce a judgment by seizing a domain name and that of the secured creditor who wishes to create an enforceable security interest in a domain name as collateral for a loan.
展开▼
