DomainSponsor Sues Publisher for Parking Domains It Didn’t Own
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Parking company says publisher committed fraud by parking domains it didn’t own.
Oversee.net, parent company of domain parking company DomainSponsor, has filed a lawsuit (pdf) against one of its former customers.
The lawsuit alleges that Simple Solutions, LLC, parked domains with DomainSponsor and represented that it owned the domain names. However, Oversee.net alleges that Simple Solutions didn’t actually own the domains, and their ownership was in dispute.
DomainSponsor’s advertising feed provider refused to pay DomainSponsor for clicks on the domains because of the dispute over ownership. The parking company ended up paying over $75,000 to the defendants, but its feed provider didn’t pay DomainSponsor for any of the clicks. (Although not referenced in the lawsuit, DomainSponsor’s main ad feed is Google).
The alleged fraud took place in November and December 2006.
Oversee.net is suing for breach of contract and fraud. It is seeking actual damages, interest, punitive damages, and attorneys fees.
Further Reading:
- DomainSponsor to add non PPC links?
- Leap Day News: DomainSponsor, Ask.com, Skenzo
- TrafficClub Loses DomainSponsor, Google
Tags: domainsponsor, Oversee.net
DomainSponsor Sues Publisher for Parking Domains It Didn?t Own – http://tinyurl.com/yh37vn2
Geez Louise—Can it get any worse for Oversee?
Thanks for sharing Andrew.
That’s an interesting news. How they able to park the domain if they don’t own it?
EM @ KING.NET
With all of the investigations going on at Oversee right now because of the Halverez scandal, I am sure we will be seeing great news for months to come.
This is an interesting case. The phrase “own all necessary rights” in the agreement is the key. If Simple Solutions didn’t have ANY rights, how did they change the nameservers? I haven’t read the lawsuits cited in the petition, but their answer should be fun to read.
@ EM @ KING.NET
Its a numbers game. Many parking companies allow you to add domains and they have no checking procedure. So crooks like this can add 100000s of dns to their parking ac in the hope that some of the real owners will use the parking service concerned.
So they don’t own the dns but get the click revenue if the real owner has set nameservers correctly.
@ andy kelly
Thank you. It’s a bad business.
Parked.com will alert if you if the domain name is already in someone’s account. I think this is nice.
Regards,
EM @ KING.NET
What will be interesting to hear is the percentage of the revenue sharing by the domain owner. It is blacked out on the lawsuit.
I’m sure it will eventually leak.
EM,
Parked indicates when a domain is already loaded into Parked.
The flaw with Parked is they don’t notify you when your domain is taken out of your acct.
Whereas, DS notifies you if the domain is in someone else acct. And, if it is switched, the original owner is notified that the domain was taken out of his acct.
Why three years later?
Oversee now realizing they need to drum up some money?
There is much worser news. Compare the privacy policy on Oversee today to the Archive.org privacy policy from 2007 / early 2008, to see what I mean.
Oversee gives out YOUR personal information like credit cards to lawyers / firms that sue them.
So will the money Simple Solutions jacked be given to the rightful domain owners. I remember when a few guys were doing this with mydomain.com dns and such.
“Oversee gives out YOUR personal information like credit cards to lawyers / firms that sue them.”
…and what do you expect them to do in response to a subpoena?
Did I mention a subpoena? I don’t see me saying subpoena.
Matt is correct. Oversee gives out all sorts of info without a subpoena. It happened to me and others I know.
In my case they were on a first name basis with the domain attorney who contacted them and they just logged into may account and told him whatever he wanted to know. Their loyalty should have been to me. I made them a lot of money.
Anyone with a large portfolio who is still unsing DS be warned. They’ll throw you under the bus in a heartbeat.
DS does doesn’t understand how seriously people take their privacy.
Someone told me that oversee is the devil.