This can be a rather arcane corner of the world to watch, but glancing at the rate at which a company defends domain names can be interesting. For instance, it can tell you how aggressive their lawyers can be at defending various rights, such as intellectual property. And so DomainNameWire did just that to get a bead on the companies that were most active last year and the winner was Roche, followed by Lego. Another drugmaker, Sanofi-Aventis, was the sixth most-active filer.

Using data from UDRPSearch, Domain Name Wire tabulated the total number of UDRP cases filed by in 2009 and found that Roche filed 54 with the World Intellectual Property Organization and two with the National Arbitration Forum. A good many stemmed from efforts to take down sites promoting Tamiflu for swine flu. And Roche didn’t lose any of them.

But Roche’s track record came to a halt last month after losing a dispute for the domain name ValiumNoPrescription.biz. Even though Valium is a Roche trademark, one Uniform Dispute Resolution Process panelist noted there’s no way an Internet user would confuse the site with a Roche site. Think about it - getting prescription drugs with no prescription isn’t something Roche offers.

“As much as unlicensed Internet pharmacies might be appalling and dangerous and desperately in-need of regulation, the (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution) policy is not intended, nor is it well-adapted, to stop this type of Internet commerce,” wrote panelist Don Hunter.