PIPCU Gets Funding To 2017 To Continue Fight Against IP Fraud, And Suspend Related Domains
The City of London’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has been given funding to ensure its existence to at least 2017, and will undoubtedly see it continue to be a thorn in the side of those who peddle counterfeit goods online.
Among its successes, the IP Crime Group report 2013/2014 notes PIPCU has already investigated more than £29 million worth of IP crime and has suspended 2,359 domain names. PIPCU was also involved in the review of Nominet’s domain registration policy.
The Minister for Intellectual Property, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, confirmed the £3 million has been allocated to the City of London Police’s national crime unit at the Anti-Counterfeiting Group Conference in London.
PIPCU uses several methods to address intellectual property crime including some new tools and techniques. These include deregistering domain names, the removal of payment services from sites selling, counterfeit/infringing products, working with advertising companies to reduce advertising as a revenue source on such sites, and court blocking orders against Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and mainstream criminal prosecutions.
PIPCU was set-up in September 2013 and is now a 21-person team consisting of detectives, police staff investigators, analysts, researchers, an education officer and a communications officer. The unit also has the added skills and expertise from two secondees; a Senior Intelligence Officer from the UK IPO and an Internet Investigator from the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI).
“The Government committing to fund the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit until 2017 is fantastic news for the City of London Police and the creative industries and very bad news for those that seek to make capital through intellectual property crime,” said City of London Police Commander Steve Head, who is the Police National Coordinator for Economic Crime.
“Since launching a year ago PIPCU has quickly established itself as an integral part of the national response to a problem that is costing the UK more than a billion pounds a year. Much of this success is down to PIPCU moving away from traditional policing methods and embracing new and innovative tactics, to disrupt and dismantle criminal networks responsible for causing huge damages to legitimate businesses.
“PIPCU has benefitted immensely from forging a close alliance with the IPO; forming partnerships with national and international law enforcement bodies, the creative industries and the public and private sector. This puts the unit and the City of London Police as a whole in a strong position to make an even bigger impact and greater inroads into intellectual property crime over the next couple of years.”
Baroness Neville-Rolfe commented that PIPCU’s continued operation will help in the fight against IP crime, which costs the UK economy £ 1.3 billion a year in lost profits and taxes.
“We’ve seen significant success in PIPCU’s first year of operation. This extra support for the unit will help them to build on this impressive record in the fight against intellectual property crime, which costs the UK at least £ 1.3 billion a year in lost profits and taxes,” said Baroness Neville-Rolfe.
“With more money now being invested in ideas than factories or machinery in the UK, it is vital that we protect creators and consumers and the UK’s economic growth. Government and industry must work together to give long-term support to PIPCU, so that we can strengthen the UK’s response to the blight of piracy and counterfeiters.”
The IP Crime Group report 2013/2014 is available for download from:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/361045/ipcreport13.pdf
Verisign Third Quarter Results Show Steady Growth In .COM/.NET
Verisign reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2014 that showed reported revenue of $255 million, up 4.7 percent from the same period in 2013, but cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $1.5 billion, a decrease of $249 million as compared with year-end 2013.
And despite over 200 new gTLDs having entered General Availability, 1.15 million new .com and .net domain names were added during the third quarter, ending with 130.0 million active domain names in the zone for both gTLDs, 3.3 percent increase over the zone at the end of the third quarter in 2013.
Verisign also reported that in the third quarter they processed 8.7 million new domain name registrations for .com and .net as compared to 8.3 million for the same period in 2013.
The final .com and .net renewal rate for the second quarter of 2014 was 71.8 percent compared with 72.7 percent for the same quarter in 2013. Renewal rates are not fully measurable until 45 days after the end of the quarter.
For more information, see the Verisign announcement here.
Ebola.com Sold for $50,000
According to Domain Investing, the owner of Ebola.com, has sold the domain name Ebola.com for a whopping $50,000.
The owner of Ebola.com is Jon Schultz and he owns the domain name for six years.Schultz registered the domain name in 2008 for $13,500.He owns many othe disease-related domain names,including H1N1.COM and Birdflu.com.
According to whois records, the domain name was first registered in 1997.
The buyer is Weed Growth Fund.
Congratulations to both the seller and the buyer.
ICANN CEO Congratulates Newly Elected ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao
Fadi Chehadé, The President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN has extended his congratulations and best wishes to the newly elected Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
“We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Houlin Zhao on his election as the ITU Secretary-General,” said Chehadé. “His global support was punctuated by the fact that he obtained 152 votes of the 156 countries that were present and voting in the election.”
Zhao will succeed current ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Toure in January and Chehadé made a point of underscoring Dr. Toure’s contributions to enhancing lines of communication with ICANN.
“We are grateful to Dr. Toure for the bridges he helped build between the ITU and ICANN,” said Chehadé. “Our interactions have been built on a foundation of mutual respect and a shared belief that the Internet has an increasingly important role in global socioeconomic development. We are enthused at the prospect of continuing those efforts with Houlin Zhao.”
This announcement was sourced from:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2014-10-23-en
.Healthcare – 1,406 Registrations on Day One of General Availability, .VET – 648 and .Army – 202
Donuts launched yesterday another new gTLD : .Healthcare. After the first 24 hours of General Availability there were 1,406 .Healthcare domain names registered.
Four other new gTLDs entered General Availability yesterday, October 22,2014: .Army, .Navy, .Airforce and .Vet.After the first 24 hours of General Availability, .Army had 202 registrations , .Vet had 648 registrations, .Navy had 122 registrations and .Airforce had 116 registrations.
The numbers also include registrations from Sunrise and Landrush period.
