Tag Archives: cybersquatting

Fri 31st January 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Why cybersquatting won’t be a large understanding in new TLDs - Cybersquatting is motivated by profit, and it will be difficult to make money cybersquatting on new TLDs. Much of the talk and consternation over introducing new top level domain names has focused on protections for intellectual property owners. Trademark holders have been worried about having to protect their brands in hundreds of new domain name extensions. When it comes to cybersquatting, I think it’s clear that it won’t be nearly as big of a deal as it has ... read more ...
Fri 1st November 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
True Religion jeans association sues over TrueReligion.com domain name - Last month I wrote about how jeans company True Religion lost a domain name arbitration case with the owner of TrueReligion.com. The owner of TrueReligion.com registered the domain name in 1998, many years before the jeans company came into existence. He originally used the domain name to write about Islam. But once the jeans company became very popular, he started using the domain name to profit from the True Religion brand. The jeans company lost its UDRP domain ... read more ...
Wed 2nd October 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Health Insurance Marketplaces are here, and so are a Cybersquatters - Typosquatters were quick to register domain names similar to new health exchanges. Yesterday marked the official start of the health insurance marketplaces under Obamacare. Residents of most states can shop for plans at HealthCare.gov, but 17 states and Washington D.C. have their own websites for their health exchanges. The domain names selected by each state have no similarities. Some use .com, others .org, and still others .gov. Some use state abbreviations, others ... read more ...
Tue 13th August 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This is dirty: HelpScout.net owners files lawsuit opposite HelpScout.com - Company formed in 2011 claims domain names registered in 2009 infringe its trademark. Brightwurks, Inc., which owns support service Help Scout, has filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against the domain names HelpScout.com and Help-Scout.com. Here’s what happened: In 2009, Andy Eder of Germany registered the domain names. In 2010, the plaintiff registered the domain name HelpScout.net and started building a business on it. He obviously chose the .net because the .com ... read more ...
Tue 30th July 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Yahoo gets obvious for prioritizing cybersquatting cases - Patent covers discovering and prioritizing cybersquatting issues. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 8,499,032 (pdf) to Yahoo for a “System and method for compiling a set of domain names to recover”. The invention, which I wrote about when the application was published in 2010, allows a trademark owner to generate a list of potentially infringing domain names. This list is run against network data to prioritize which domain names get ... read more ...
Mon 29th July 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Law organisation claims general authorised domain name is cybersquatting - Law firm with the generic name “Outside Legal Counsel” sues Dan Rubin over OutsideLegalCounsel.com domain name. [Update: the case was resolved.] A law firm called Outside Legal Counsel Plc has sued JustDropped.com and its owner Dan Rubin, claiming he is cybersquatting on OutsideLegalCounsel.com. At first I thought the attorneys for the case made a mistake, as it appeared someone acting as outside general counsel (a common name for an outside law firm working on ... read more ...
Wed 12th June 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wanna lawsuit? WannaDo battles WannaDo in court, claims cybersquatting - App creator sues event ticketing site over Wannado name and domain name. Two businesses offer relatively similar services at a about the same time and use the same name: WannaDo. One secures the best domain name for the service. Wanna bet that results in a lawsuit? Yep. Wannado, Inc. has sued The Active Network, Inc over its use of the Wannado name and Wannado.com. The plaintiff is a Tennessee corporation that offers an app on the iTunes store. The Wannado app provides ... read more ...
Wed 5th June 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Irony alert: Trademark association loses cybersquatting explain on TrademarkDirect.com.au - “UK’s Leading Trade Mark Service” loses cybersquatting complaint. Oh, it’s delicious. Trade Mark Direct Ltd of London has lost a cybersquatting complaint filed under the .au Dispute Resolution Policy for the domain name TrademarkDirect.com.au. The irony of the Trade Mark Direct’s utter failure to provide sufficient evidence in the case was not lost on the panel, which wrote: It is clear that the disputed domain name is identical to the trademark which is ... read more ...
Mon 8th April 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
California seat seller files fit over UrbanHome.com - Second lawsuit filed after UDRP decision. The legal expenses are mounting on this one. Urban Home, the California furniture maker that filed a UDRP on UrbanHome.com, has now filed a federal lawsuit in California to try to get the domain name. The suit is in response to UrbanHome.com’s owner, Technology Online, filing suit in Nevada to halt the transfer of the domain name. The WIPO panel found in favor of Urban Home. Technology Online decided to sue to stop the transfer. I’m ... read more ...
Mon 1st April 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lawsuit: cybersquatters attempted to fool suppliers out of $60,000+ of merchandise - W. W. Williams says fraudsters uses domain name to try to trick suppliers to send merchandise. Usually when a cybersquatter grabs a domain similar to a company’s name, the cybersquatter just hopes to make a few bucks from a parked page. But sometimes the perpetrator has much more nefarious plans. W.W. Williams, which provides services and products to industrial companies, alleges that’s the case with the registrant of WWWilliamsInc.com. The company uses the domain ... read more ...
Sun 31st March 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
“Domainer” and “Domain Parking” strike CNN.com home page - Article discusses cybersquatter who calls himself a domainer. One of the top stories on CNN.com today is about a self-proclaimed “domainer”. Unfortunately, that domainer is a cybersquatter, so the article doesn’t paint domainers in a positive light. The article is about Taikwok Yung. I’ve written about Yung before, when he registered domains related to Bank of America and Merrill Lynch when they planned their merger. Back then I took issue with him calling ... read more ...
Thu 21st February 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
When will Sony go after Playstation4.com? - Company announced new video game system but hasn’t yet secured key domain name. Sony gave the first glimpse of the capabilities of its forthcoming PlayStation 4 yesterday. You’ll find plenty of information about it at Playstation4.com, but that’s not an official site. The domain name is owned by Poise Media Inc., which forwards the domain to its PSXextreme.com web site. Sony owns Playstation.com, Playstation2.com, and Playstation3.com. It’s only a matter of ... read more ...
Tue 19th February 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Nintendo files censure over WiiU.com - Company says owner is cybersquatting with WiiU.com domain name. Nintendo released WiiU, the successor to its popular Wii video game system Wii, in November. But it was missing a key online marketing ingredient: the domain name WiiU.com. Now it has filed a cybersquatting complaint with World Intellectual Property Forum in an effort to get the domain name. The whois record for the domain shows a registration date of 2004, well before Nintendo came up with the name for ... read more ...
Mon 28th January 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
When Chanel takes over a domain name, it sends a warning to others - Domains used to warn others that Chanel will pursue them. French fashion house Chanel has aggressively pursued counterfeiters and cybersquatters over the year. But what it does with many of the names it recovers is rather unique: it sends a warning to would-be counterfeiters and customers of counterfeit goods. Michele Neylon discovered one such example today. Here’s an example of one of the sites it took over: Chanel’s message warns counterfeiters that the company ... read more ...
Thu 24th January 2013
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ally Financial sues cybersquatter who forked domains to Chase.com - Bank files anti-cybersquatting lawsuit after domain owner refused to hand over domain names. Ally Financial (GMAC) has filed a lawsuit against a Scottsdale man who allegedly registered domains including the Ally brand and forwarded the to its rival Chase.com. According to the suit (pdf), Donald Jones registered a handful of domain names including AllyBankLoans.com, AllyBancShares.com, and AllyNationalBank.com. Ally alleges that he then forwarded these domain names ... read more ...
Thu 29th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lawyer Marc Randazza sues derogator Crystal Cox in weird case - Lawyer involved in domain disputes files his own cybersquatting lawsuit to protect his family’s names. Now this is a bizarre case. You may have heard of first amendment lawyer Marc Randazza before. He’s by all accounts a colorful character, and he was the one who represented the owner of glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com against Glenn Beck in a UDRP. It sounds like at some point he caught the attention of “investigative blogger” Crystal Cox. In ... read more ...
Thu 15th November 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ad network says scammers are impersonating it regulating cybersquatted domain names - Q Interactive says scammers are duping publishers into signing ad agreements. Chicago based online advertising company Q Interactive has filed a lawsuit alleging that someone is impersonating it to dupe web site publishers out of advertising revenue. The unknown perpetrators have used domain names very similar to Q Interactive’s real web address, QInteractive.com, in their scheme. According to the suit (pdf), the scammers have registered the domain names qinteractiveagency.com, ... read more ...
Thu 4th October 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Company sues to get Reinvention.com domain name - Marketing company claims domain infringes its re:invention mark. An Illinois marketing company called Reinvention, Inc. has sued data sampling company Reinvention, LLC, which owns the Reinvention.com domain name. The brief, five page complaint (pdf) claims that Reinvention, LLC is infringing on Reinvention, Inc’s trademark for “re:invention”. Reinvention, Inc. filed for its trademark last year and it was granted this year. It claims first use in commerce in ... read more ...
Thu 20th September 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Ashley Furniture files cybersquatting lawsuit opposite owners of 123 domain names - Company says defendant used to work at ad agency that catered to home furnishings companies. Ashley Furniture is a pretty aggressive UDRP filer. It usually goes after clear cut cases of cybersquatting, save for one egregious case for Ashley.com filed in 2008. Now the company is turning to the courts in a dispute against a Maryland man. The company just filed suit (pdf) against Jon Parks, who the company alleges violated the Anti-Cybersquatting Protection Act by registering ... read more ...
Fri 7th September 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Libya loses anticybersquatting lawsuit - Libya and its embassy lose a domain name lawsuit that started well before Gaddafi’s overthrow. A federal district court yesterday handed down a ruling in a very interesting cybersquatting case, and much of the interest lies in who the plaintiff was: Libya. Back in 2006 The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and the Embassy of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya filed suit against Ahmad Miski for cybersquatting. (After the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s government, ... read more ...
Thu 30th August 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Where do many cybersquatters live? - Oh, more thoughtfully composed and helpful info from WIPO: Still no delineation for 3rd Level Sub-Domains as a contributive source to these problems! Clever coding to isolate 3rd from 2nd, making 3rd look guilty when 2nd is far, far more guilty. The US Federal District Court, Eastern District Virginia I await comment. Cheers, Graham. Here is some useful information, for the less informed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting), according ... read more ...
Tue 3rd July 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Entrepreneur Media continues to sue entrepreneurs who use a word entrepreneur - Got ‘entrepreneur’ in your name? If you publish information to help entrepreneurs, you might be sued. Entrepreneur Media (EMI), the company that publishes Entrepreneur magazine, continues to file lawsuits against people that use the term entrepreneur in their name or domain name. The latest lawsuit was filed July 2 against JMD Entertainment Group, a Maryland company that owns the domain name entrepreneursedge.tv. You’re not alone if you find the company’s ... read more ...
Mon 2nd July 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Facebook says genuine estate organisation is cybersquatting on 30 domain names - 30 domains include “facebook” in them. Facebook has filed a cybersquatting complaint against a San Diego area realty company, claiming that the company is cybersquatting on its famous mark. The complaint with National Arbitration Forum lists thirty total domain names that include the Facebook name andrew are registered to Pellegrino Realty in La Mesa, California: facebookbroker.com facebookclothes.com facebookcupid.com facebookdating.net facebookdirectbuy.com facebookevites.com facebookexchange.com facebookexchange.net facebookgreeting.com facebookgreetings.com facebookhub.com facebookjukebox.com facebooklayoutpimp.com facebooklayoutpro.com facebookmusicstore.com facebookperfectmatch.com facebookpoked.com facebookpokers.com facebookpoking.com facebookpress.com facebookringtones.net facebookshop.net facebooksingles.net facebooksticker.com facebookstickers.net facebookstuff.net facebookthreads.net facebooktones.com pimpmyfacebook.net shopfacebook.net I ... read more ...
Thu 28th June 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Twitter finally gets Twiter.com domain it won in dispute - Over a half year later, Twitter finally gets high traffic typo. Last year Twitter filed a cybersquatting complaint against the owner of the Twiter.com domain name. Twitter was rightfully upset about the high traffic typo domain as it forward to a “survey” that mimicked the look and feel of Twitter’s own web site. Twitter dropped the case only to refile it shortly thereafter. A UDRP arbitration panel finally ruled in Twitter’s favor in November 2011. But that’s ... read more ...
Sun 24th June 2012
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Company sues over stolen domains after losing UDRP - Austin Rare Coins asks court to hand over allegedly stolen domain names. An Austin company has filed an in rem cybersquatting lawsuit in an effort to get control over eight domain names it says were stolen from its possession. Austin Rare Coins, Inc. first turned to National Arbitration Forum with a UDRP filing to try to get the domain names back. The panel awarded it one domain but not the others, saying it didn’t prove any trademark rights to most of the domain ... read more ...