Verizon Sued Over Error Redirects
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
Communications company will have to defend its DNS wildcarding practices.
It looked like a slam dunk case for Verizon (NYSE: VZ) when it sued Navigation Catalyst Systems, Inc. for trademark infringement. Navigation Catalyst owns a number of domains similar to Verizon’s marks.
But Navigation Catalyst found this to be a perfect opportunity to point out that Verizon is a hypocrite. It filed counterclaims citing Verizon’s error redirect system that monetizes typos on its internet service.
I’ve written about these error redirects many times. The bottom line is that some of CADNA’s members, including Dell and Verizon, infringe trademarks every day with these services. If almost all generic domain names are registered, then these companies’ error redirect “services” are likely activated for trademark terms 99.9% of the time. Perhaps this lawsuit will force Verizon to reveal how much it’s making from this program and which typos receive the most traffic.
I don’t agree with what Navigation Catalyst has (allegedly) done. But no one likes a hypocrite.
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I bet Phil Corwin and Michael Collins are smiling.
In a Modern Domainer article earlier this year, Verizon objected to Phil’s claim that its serve is much like typosquatting, saying that what they offer is “a service”. Funny.
It’s about time this was brought to light in the courts.
If we could get them all to stop doing this then generic domains would benefit since they might regain some of their original traffic that was taken away from them.
Nice post, seems like the only ones who win in this case will be Google/Yahoo as there ads appear at either result.
Those who live in glass houses should not be throwing rocks at others.
Will be good to see what a/the court/s say about these “redirects.”
[...] as they use “error services” to show ads on typo domains. In fact, Navigation Catalyst counter-sued based on this error [...]
[...] as they use “error services” to show ads on typo domains. In fact, Navigation Catalyst counter-sued based on this error service. It appears that the countersuit may have helped Navigation Catalyst, [...]