When Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate late last month, it became immediately clear that the domain name HarrisWalz.com was now worth something. $15,000, by Jeremy Green Eche's estimation.

Eche registered the domain back in 2020, taking a gamble on a bevy of candidate combinations he believed could one day run for office. “When I hit the jackpot, it happens to be profitable,” he told Bloomberg Law. “Fundamentally for me it’s just a hobby, something I enjoy doing.” More than a hobby, it's also something of an advertisement for his trademark registration business JPG Legal LLC.

But some argue that Eche's practice of "cybersquatting" may not be entirely kosher.

“I think it’s unlawful. I think it’s unsavory. I think it’s unethical. Congress passed a law that says, ‘Don’t do this,’ and this guy said, ‘I’m doing this,'" David J. Steele of Tucker Ellis LLP, noted. He added that Eche is "'clearly articulating his intent, and his intent was to register the name of another living person' and to make money on a sale of the domain."

To settle such disputes, cases are handled under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy which was created by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—the same group that creates new domains like ".biz" and ".club".

But trademark attorney Joel Feldman of Greenberg Traurig believes that there is no fundamental law against "prospecting" for domain names. In fact, if Eche and other cybersquatters are to be litigated against, "it’d have more success in a lawsuit…as US federal law on registering names is more explicit. Intent to profit is also legally different under US law, where it’s a term of art into which Eche’s behavior squarely fits," Bloomberg writes.

Taylor Swift Gets Involved

Earlier this year, Swift's intellectual property entity, TAS Rights Management, filed cybersquatting cases against registrants of domains that they say infringe on her IP rights, reports Domain Name Wire.

The domains (which are various iterations of the "taylor swift" and "merch shop") were registered by a Pakistani man looking to mirror Swift's official website. TAS Rights Management has requested the World Intellectual Property Organization transfer the domains to them under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.

Verdict

It seems capitalizing on a brand like Taylor Swift is one thing when registering a domain name for profit. But claiming the same for "HarrisWalz" might be a harder case to prove. Regardless, speculation as business model is not exclusive to the realm of the net.