Digging Deeper into the EEOC’s Final GINA Regulations
As we wrote yesterday, last week the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued definitive rules and regulations (pdf) with respect to Title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA). In our previous post we offered a brief overview of the new regulations, as well as some preliminary suggestions for employers just now coming to grips with GINA.
We also promised to take a closer look in today’s post at several substantive features of the EEOC’s new regulations.
Defining the Terms. The EEOC, the government agency generally responsible for enforcing federal employment nondiscrimination laws, was the logical choice to promulgate regulations under GINA’s Title II, which governs the use of genetic information by employers and similar entities. But not all of GINA’s statutory provisions were within the EEOC’s area of expertise.
Protecting Your Brand Name on the Internet
Twenty-four hundred years ago, in the scroll age, the marketing guru Socrates observed, “Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of.” In the intervening years, only the technology of communication has changed; the wisdom of protecting your brand name and the goodwill it carries is still valid. For many of today’s businesses that are built on innovative products or services, such as those provided by many of the readers of The Genomics Law Report, the Internet and its social media are the most important methods of communicating with potential customers and collaborators.
Brand protection on the Internet begins with selecting and registering a “domain name.” Domain names are akin to virtual street addresses on the Internet, where the registry or “top level domain” is the name of the street and the string to the left of the “.” in the domain name is the ‘second level domain name.” Thus, “genomicslawreport.com” is the unique address for our site, consisting of the second level domain “genomicslawreport” registered on the popular “com” street. Anyone in the world can find us and no one else publishing there. We have grown jaded about this technological marvel, but a consequence of the domain name system is that every business should want to be sure that it preemptively registers domain names that support its brand and take reasonable and prudent measures to assure that others do not unfairly profit from the goodwill residing in that brand by registering domain names that impersonate, mimic or denigrate the brand or that sell counterfeit products under the brand name.
