Kremen, who fought successfully to keep domain name Sex.com in a 6-year battle that wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, will speak to attorneys in San Francisco on intellectual property and the Internet.
"It's important to dispel the myths about intellectual property, especially in the Digital Age,” Kremen said. “Changes in intellectual property (IP) law and practice mean we need to continue to define IP in this legal arena.
This is especially true of intangible intellectual property that is not defined by statue -- unlike the more common patents, trademarks and copyrights."
Kremen is CEO of Grant Media Management Inc., which owns and operates several pay-per-click search engines, including Galaxysearch.com and Sex.com. In the last 15 years, he has launched nearly 50 companies, including Match.net.
"Gary has been a force in the development of the Internet -- both commercially and legally -- for many years," said Douglas Masters, an intellectual property attorney at Loeb & Loeb LLP. "The IP legal community will find Gary's insights to be of great interest and value."
In 1994 Kremen registered the domain name Sex.com. Sex.com was then stolen from him when Stephen Michael Cohen, a five-time convicted felon and now an international fugitive, convinced VeriSign to transfer the sex.com domain name property from Kremen's ownership into his own hands. Kremen sued Cohen and VeriSign in 1998. He won a $65 million judgment against Cohen. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed Cohen's appeal based upon the doctrine of fugitive disentitlement, which is precedent-setting for a civil contempt of court arrest warrant such as Cohen's.
The long path of the Sex.com litigation is the subject of a British documentary that is scheduled to air in the summer.
The symposium will be held at the International Trade Center at the Ronald Reagan Federal Building in downtown San Francisco.