Class representative gets a small check.

Oversee.net has paid $1,500 to Stewart Resmer, the “class representative” for a lawsuit filed against Oversee.net in the wake of the halvarez shill bidding scandal.

Resmer originally filed suit against Oversee in U.S. District Court Central District of California. But the judge tossed the case out because the amount of money concerned was under $5 million.

As a result, Resmer’s lawyers refiled in The Superior Court of Los Angeles County. Oversee.net settled the case, agreeing to adopt a new shill bidding policy. The company also agreed to pay people that had overpaid as a result of the shill bidding, although it had already made that offer to customers ahead of the lawsuit.

Resmer, as class representative, got a check for $1,500. Resmer also said two non-profits may receive money as part of the settlement, including Internet Commerce Association.

Company that was subject to Google UDRP fights back.

French company Francotel, LLC has filed a UDRP complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) over the domain name Adwords.com, Domain Name Wire has learned. The case is not yet posted on WIPO’s web site.

Francotel has a French trademark for “Adwords”. It filed to cancel Google’s European Union trademark for “Adwords” earlier this year but lost the case.

Google filed a UDRP against Francotel in May over the domain name ad-words.mobi in a case that’s still pending.

Now Francotel is fighting back by going after Adwords.com itself. In the complaint, Francotel argues that there’s no reason for Google to use the Adwords.com domain name “other than to mislead consumers into inferring an association with Francotel’s adwords Mark and services.”

The company also claims that Google registered the Adwords.com domain name to infringe “thousands of trademark holder” around the world and to use the domain name for “abusive and anticompetitive practices”.

Domain registrar gets in bed with another Indy deal.

Just a day after Danica Patrick announced her move to NASCAR full time, GoDaddy has announced a new IndyCar sponsorship.

The domain name registrar has inked a deal with all three Andretti’s — Mario, Michael and Marco Andretti — as spokespeople for the company. It will also sponsor one of the Andretti Autosport IndyCar entries. The deal begins next year and goes through the 2013 season.

The three drivers will start appearing in GoDaddy commercials sometime this weekend. We should hope they don’t do a strip tease for the camera.

Any of the Andretti’s domains that weren’t already at GoDAddy appear to have just transferred to the registrar ahead of the announcement.

Judge grants Motion to Dismiss against large domain name registrar and its parent company.

The judge presiding over Verizon’s cybersquatting lawsuit has granted a Motion to Dismiss (pdf) filed by Intercosmos Media Group, Inc., directNIC, LLC and Domain Contender, LLC for lack of personal jurisdiction. Domain Contender is a subsidiary of directNIC and directNIC is a subsidiary of Intercosmos.

Verizon argued that the entities had operations in Florida. The court found otherwise:

Verizon argues that the IMG Defendants are subject to specific jurisdiction under the long-arm statute because they purportedly have an office in Florida. However, as pointed out by the IMG Defendants, there is not a shred of plausible evidence in support of this contention.

Verizon pointed to a press release suggesting DirectNIC was opening to open an office in Tampa, but the court deemed it insufficient that a release mentioning future plans for an office proved that an office existed.

Verizon also noted that Donny Simonton, which the company says is CIO of Intercosmos, attended TRAFFIC in Florida in 2007:

In addition, the non-Internet activity alleged (specifically, the presence of one IMG employee at a Florida trade show) does not constitute minimum contacts with Florida.

The companies told the court they are Louisiana entities.

Company goes to domain aftermarket to buy domain name SwarmShop.com.

Overstock.com (or should I call it O.co?) is aggressive about entering new ecommerce markets. A recent domain purchase may be a clue to what’s next for the company:

The company just bought the domain name SwarmShop.com from domain investor Mike Mann for $1,500 at Sedo. Mann appears to have registered the domain name earlier this year when it expired.

What could it use SwarmShop.com for? There are two likely uses.

The first would be a flash sales site like Amazon.com’s MyHabit.com. By all accounts it appears MyHabit is proving to be a success for Amazon.com, and this is an arena that might work well for Overstock.

Second would be a daily deals site. My guess is that Overstock would focus on merchandise daily deals instead of services. Which basically means its daily deals site would look a lot like a flash sales site anyway.

What do you think?