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 not sure what Urban Home’s angle for filing in California is. Although it may be an acceptable jurisdiction, it still agreed to be subject to the Nevada jurisdiction when it filed the UDRP.

There are a number of facts that need to be determined in this case. One is when Technology Online acquired the domain. Another is how strong Urban Home’s trademark is. Its suit claims it has “vigilantly policed and protected its rights and interests in and to the URBAN HOME trademark…” Yet it didn’t file for a trademark on the term until 2011 and didn’t go after the domain UrbanHome.com until December 2012.

Urban Home’s web address is ShopUrbanHome.com, so it’s no wonder it wants the better UrbanHome.com domain.

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 WWWilliams.com; the alleged cybersquatter merely added “inc” to the end.

According to a lawsuit (pdf) the company filed in U.S. District Court in Ohio on Friday, the registrant of the domain tried to pull off a sophisticated fraud of W.W. Williams’ suppliers.

W. W. Williams claims the registrant had a scheme that went like this:

1. establish customer accounts and credit terms with suppliers by posing as W.W. Williams
2. the suppliers would ship the merchandise to the address provided by the defendants
3. not pay for the merchandise
4. the suppliers, believing the the orders had been placed by W. W. Williams would then seek payment for the merchandise from the company

The lawsuit included some examples of the fraudulent purchase orders (pdf) including various shipping addresses. One purchase order is for what appears to be $20,000 worth of wireless microphones. Another is for $40,000 worth of portable gas monitors.

WWWilliamsInc.com was registered on March 7 to someone using Go Daddy’s Domains by Proxy service. W. W. Williams says it contacted Domains by Proxy multiple times, but the whois proxy service declined to give out the registrant’s information. However, emails from Domains by Proxy that are included in the lawsuit show that the service said it would move to unmask the owner’s information if the customer did not respond by March 28. The lawsuit was filed March 29 against Domains by Proxy and the whois record on the domain now shows the registrant, so I’m not sure why W. W. Williams filed the lawsuit the day it should have received the whois information.

Whois shows the domain is registered to a Scottsdale man, although it’s possible the information is incorrect.

You would think that this scheme would be difficult to pull off. Not only does W. W. Williams have the shipping addresses for the merchandise, but it would be difficult to move this sort of volume of merchandise on a black market. Perhaps the perpetrator just wanted to defraud the companies without benefiting itself in a financial way?

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 himself a domainer, since he was clearly cybersquatting.

The CNN article is about a lawsuit between Yung and Donald Trump over four domain names. Yung lost a UDRP for the domains and then sued Trump in a case he couldn’t win.

The article mentions that Yung describes himself as a “domainer”. It also talks about domain parking.

Since he describes himself as a domainer, the general public that reads this article will now think domainer means cybersquatter.

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 time before it goes after the Playstation4.com domain name.

The company is pretty much guaranteed to win the domain name if it files a UDRP complaint. The big question is why it didn’t do so ahead of the announcement.

Sony likewise owns PS3.com but not PS4.com. PS4.com is owned by a company that’s using it as “PriceSearch4.com”.

If Sony keeps up its Playstation # naming strategy, it’s going to fight a constant domain name battle. All domains Playstation5.com through Playstation13.com (with the exception of Playstation10.com) are registered by squatters. Apple has a similar problem with iPad domain names.

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 its new system. It was likely registered because it was a four letter domain.

But whois records make it difficult to determine when the current owner acquired the domain name. The domain expired in January, but the privacy service and whois record is the same as before it expired, so the owner may have renewed it. The nameservers on the domain changed after it went into expired status, which is a sign that a new owner may have picked it up.

Regardless, I find it odd that Nintendo filed a complaint rather than just buying the domain. It’s available for a fixed price of $8,499 on BuyDomains, which is a small price to pay for a huge product name like this…especially when the UDRP isn’t a slam dunk.