For Sale Domain name registration interests are property - call your lawyer and accountant!

[msn]

As a direct result of the decision at the Ontario Court of Appeal for Tucows over the domain name renner.com that domain name registrations can constitute property, and thus leaving the domain with Tucows, the UDRP process has been weakened and registrants have a clearer path to retain their registrations.

You can read a good article about it here.

The decision is helpful to domain name registration holders, but it may have implications as well for how you now account for domain name registrations on your books as well. Ask your account to go over the situation with you.

 

[whitebark]

good article here on that
http://www.lklaw.ca/domain-names-as-personal-property/

 

[katherine]

Asset or property ? Both terms are used in the article excerpt.

 

[msn]

Asset or property ? Both terms are used in the article excerpt.

In the decision it was deemed that the intangible asset as the domain name registration constitutes personal property.

Let me oversimplify a bit:

At the tender age of 18 you open a shop in a small storefront on a street in a less-frequented part of your town, and sign a 20 year lease with the owner of the building for the space.

Five years later, many new businesses move into the neighbourhood and things really go well for you with many new customers.

After another five years, things are going so well, and the area has become so very popular that more shops and restaurants want to have a location on your street than there is available space. One such business comes to you and offers to buy your interest in your lease for twenty times what your annual profits are, and you happily agree to the deal.

Even though you do not own the building, and even though you can only remain there as long as you renew your lease and continue to pay the agreed amounts, you have an intangible interest there with your shop which takes form in the rights you have from having the lease, which is a nice parallel to domain name registrations.

The court, having recognized this, has codified what many of us have long believed and thereby set a foundation stone for the maturation of this industry.