Competitor Sues Experian, Says It’s Cybersquatting
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
Credit report companies spar over domain names.
Adaptive Marking LLC has sued ConsumerInfo.com, an Experian company, over its use of the FreeCreditScore.com domain name.
Adaptive Marketing uses the domain names FreeScore.com and FreeTripleScore.com. You’re probably familiar with TV commercials for the latter domain, in which people are asked to say “Free Triple Score dot com” three times fast.
ConsumerInfo.com bought the FreeCreditScore.com domain name around October 2009, according to the suit, and then launched a $10-$15 million advertising campaign to promote the brand. It was a replacement for the company’s FreeCreditReport.com marketing push, popularized by a poorly singing rock band. (Incidentally, this change in branding might affect the value of CreditCheck.com and FreeCreditCheck.com, which sold for $3 million in 2007.)
Adaptive Marketing alleges that FreeCreditScore.com infringes on its marks for FreeScore.com and FreeTripleScore.com. Among Adaptive’s claims is that this violates the U.S. Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act.
This seems like a stretch, as “Free Credit Score” is a very generic term, and probably couldn’t be trademarked in its own right. “Free Score” and “Free Triple Score” are more distinctive since they don’t describe the service.
You can read the complaint here (pdf).
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FreeCreditReport.com won ALL of their UDRPs, which I think is BULLSHIT. Because 1. Their domain is a generic unoriginal rip-off. and 2. Their scam product is also an unoriginal rip-off.
I say feed them all to a group of hungry polar bears.
That is BULLSHIT as it is so generic in nature.
Anything similar to any of those domains should be considered generic.
@Barry, ever notice the very best .com typos of freecreditreport.com belong to the same man who uses them in affiliation with FCR and has never had a problem. He also owns freecreditreport.org. I dont mean he owns 1 or 2 but dozens. Perhaps inside job, maybe not…
Who is Michael Drear ????? He has countless addresses for the names.
He also owns freecreditreport.net.
Its one thing if he owned them and said generic term go away but he regitered dozens and dozens of typos and uses them all with their affiliate program, strange stuff going on there…
FreeCreidtReport.com, another example I found, turns out Experian took this from him not long ago, looks like they finally caught on. He continues to use their affiliate though on his correct spellings All I know is this guy had dozens of their typos with XXXX uv a day raking in $XX a lead, mucho dollars for years!
Sorry I keep posting Andrew, maybe add them all together?
Any way just remembered, he owns many typos of freecreditcheck.com as well. Example beingFREECRDITCHECK.COM,WWWFREECREDITCHECK.COM etc etc etc. This guy is ” good “, maintains the address of a $64,000 house in PA LOL
If you want to see most of them search google for ” Michael Drear ” and go through the pages.