"Brexit" rumbles on but the juggernaut that is EU legislation will not be denied: indeed, in many cases even staunch "leavers" see benefits in much of what the EU does (which leads to the charge of "cherry picking" to which the leavers say "so what?")

The Trade Mark Directive is one such piece of legislation providing intellectual property protection across a large market and, through international recognition, across much of the world. But it's not all rosy and it shows something about how EU citizens relate to their law-makers.

Fraud is cyclical. Historically, frauds would lie dormant for, perhaps, five years then come back. But the cycle has become much shorter, often only two or three months. Some frauds have become perpetual, aided by e-mail that hits so many prospective targets at such a low marginal cost. Others have a few days in the light before disappearing into relative darkness for a matter of weeks, perhaps because the targets are sorted by e.g. alphabetical order, into batches. One such is fraud relating to domain names. They take several forms but the same basic structure. The fraudster hints that, if you don't pay up, your domain name will stop working. Here's the anatomy of one such fraudulent mail that has reached us multiple times in the past several days.