The High Cost of Giving Away Sex.com
Confession: The (not unjustifiable) web of endless litigation spawned by Gary Kremen in trying to vindicate his rights against con-man Stephen Cohen over Cohen's theft of the domain name "sex.com" has intersected my life at least once. If you are a lawyer in Northern California, it is hard to avoid.
Nevertheless, I'll provide this handy pointer to Judge Kozinski's opinion, published today by the Ninth Circuit, holding that an internet domain name is "property" that can be the subject of the tort of "conversion" under California law in one of Mr. Kremen's cases. In the words of Mr. Kremen's lawyer, James Wagstaffe of Kerr & Wagstaffe, this may be "the first case that applies traditional property law to the Internet."
(The quotation from Mr. Wagstaffe above comes from Law.com's timely reporting on the case here.)