Protection against contentious content

Domain name recovery

You have intellectual property rights and notice a third party is unlawfully using a term covered by these rights on a website. SafeBrands offers to take action on your behalf and put an end to the problem.

WHEN SHOULD YOU HIRE US?

Management of your brand and its image on the internet is an essential preoccupation. It is important to control the use third parties make of it, because they often have bad intentions.

Whether you continually monitor the use of your brands or discover something that has been flagged up, learning that a third party seems to be using your brand on the internet for a nefarious purpose is always concerning: is it an attempt at defamation, copyright infringement, phishing, etc.? You must respond quickly! Our priority is to end the infringement of your rights without having to wait for a court or arbitration forum’s decision.

Such infringements require a very quick and informed intervention, and the expertise of SafeBrands lawyers will be a considerable asset to quickly putting an end to the issue. Furthermore, if there were to be a dispute, being able to list the actions you have taken before the court would constitute an advantage in the proceedings.

SafeBrands can support these steps with an initial report in order to define the infringement of your rights before taking action. We offer to act on your behalf by claiming your rights in order to have the contentious content taken down.

The mandate may be initiated to resolve different kinds of cases:

A phishing site or emails (copying of a site’s content, fake president fraud, identity theft, etc.),
Fraudulent content on a platform operated by a third party (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, ),
A former distributor hidden behind a private WHOIS

In most cases, an action targeting the owner will have the opposite effect than what is intended. In that case, solutions include looking into other actors on the chain such as registrars, registries or content distribution platforms. Due to the severity of the infringement, the voluntarily fraudulent owner cannot be expected to cooperate. In such a case, deleting or recovering the name becomes of secondary importance due to the infringement and may, of course, occur as a result of the action taken with the provider or be recovered through an amicable recovery mandate.

1. INFRIGEMENT SUSPENSION MANDATE

The fees for this service are non refundable and billed, for each takedown request, at the flat rate found in the appendix. They pay for our team of experts to build the case and for all actions aimed at having the infringement withdrawn.

In certain cases, if the time required for the file exceeds the current standard duration (approximately two hours), continuing the procedures will result in additional billing for the time involved. In this case, you will be consulted beforehand so you can decide whether to continue or end the procedure.

SafeBrands cannot guarantee that the provider housing the contentious content will accept your arguments. We may discover, once the process is initiated, that the provider has prior rights to the domain name. Rest assured that our expertise in the field of domain names enables us to handle all of the different foreseeable courses of action.

2. BUILDING A CASE

Before any action is taken and for us to better plan out our task, it will be necessary to build a case. You may then be asked to send us copies of any official document certifying the intellectual property rights that you seek to assert.

Based on these, our legal department will establish an action plan and identify the best steps to take for your situation.

A status report will also be created and the following elements recorded and archived:

Copy of the domain name WHOIS data, if relevant
Screenshot of the page(s) in question
Screenshot of the source code of the page(s) in question
The result of in-depth research to identify the type of domain name holder and the different possible contact methods

These steps are taken to be able to identify any change in situation, to make sure we can move forward on a case even if the provider refuses to cooperate.

3. CONTACTING THE PROVIDER

After the case is built, the contact means identified by our legal department—email addresses, phone number, social media, mailing address, etc.—will be used successively to issue one or several formal demand(s) to the provider.

We will use all available means and send demands by registered mail with notification of delivery. We will notify you as soon as we have contacted the provider and will let you know what his/her position is.

Our knowledge of the industry and its stakeholders will enable us to adapt our necessary requests to the providers while leaving the owner in the dark to avoid any action on his/her part that would prevent us from reaching a resolution based on the initially identified infringement.

The success of this process also depends on the attitude of the provider, who sometimes prefers to ignore our requests and wait for a binding decision. The relevance of your intellectual property rights in the potential case will be very important as well.

If the provider first refuses to put an end to the issue, we will send the request again to remind him/her of your rights and the risk incurred. If, over a three-month period, the provider cannot be reached or refuses to comply with the request, we will inform you and close the case. A report of our research and actions will be sent to you.

Get a free consultation

According to the provisions of the french law « loi informatique et libertés n°78-17 » of January 6, 1978, you have the right to access, correct and delete the personal data that SafeBrands collects from you. You can obtain more information regarding this subject by connecting to the website www.cnil.fr. our personal data are collected by us for the sole purpose of contacting you as part of your free consultation request. You can contact us to exercise this right, with a copy of your ID attached, by writing to the following address : Safebrands, Correspondent Informatique et Libertés, Pole Media of the Belle de Mai, 37 rue Guibal, 13356 MARSEILLE Cedex 03, or via email to cil@safebrands.com.