A recent ruling of an Italian court has caused turmoil in the online industry. A maintainer was tried and found guilty of setting up a domain name on behalf of a customer, who was infringing trademark laws of a well-known enterprise operating in Italy.
In the online search industry the domain name may become a relevant part of the search strategy: keyword-rich domain names have been known to be favoured by search engines, giving them the ever-so-slight advantage on competition. It is not uncommon to seek a local presence by setting up a new local domain to acquire visibility.
The procedure to set up an .it domain name involves 3 parties:
- The Italian Registration Authority (NIC.it)
- A Provider/Maintainer
- The end user
A maintainer is typically a web agency or internet provider who deals directly with NIC.it. The end user is required to undersign a formal request of activation (called la lettera di assunzione responsabilit
