Cease & desist letter claims infringement based on ISP’s redirect service.
Anyone who owns generic acronym domain names is well aware of the possibility of receiving a cease & desist letter from someone claiming rights to it. This is particularly prevalent with three and four character domain names, for which any number of companies may hold a trademark or at least use the acronym.
Some domain owners completely disable their acronym domains rather than park them, because the domain parking page may show ads related to a trademark. That appears to be what the owner of Teri.com did. The problem: an internet service provider or computer company hijacked the non-existent page and showed ads related to the trademark.
Yes, you read that right. You know how computer manufacturers install special software that redirects non-existent typos to ad pages? Domain Name Wire first broke this story by calling out Gateway, and Dell does it to. Internet service providers such as Time Warner’s Road Runner and Verizon also show these ads when a page doesn’t exist.
So with Teri.com not resolving to a web page, the trademark owner (or its lawyers Amster Rothstein & Ebenstein LLP) for “TERI” landed on this error page, and that page included ads for student loans (which the trademark is for.)
In the letter to the domain owner, which Domain Name Wire has received a copy of, the law firm states:
Since the web page also contains a message that teri.com domain name “does not exist or is not available” we assume that [Owner] is not responsible for the content of the web page. We further assume that [Owner] respects the intellectual property rights of others, including our client, TERI.
Based on the foregoing, we respectfully request that you promptly disable the current web page linking to teri.com [sic]. We also request that you promptly make arrangements to assign the domain to our client.
This is a foreshadowing of the legal troubles that Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), and Gateway face for their error redirect “services”. Because most good generic domain names are registered, I suspect that 99% of error redirects are for trademark typos. The ad providers Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) will also land on the wrong side of a lawsuit soon. (In this particular case, the ads related to TERI were delivered by Yahoo.)
How do you own teri.com, please explain.
I don’t own Teri.com.
I smell class-action coming soon.
Great post there.
Keep up the GREAT work
I’m sure the law firm that picked up the Network Solutions case would love to take the ISP redirect case.
So, Teri.org is asking the owner of Teri.com to turn this domain to them because they searched and a “student loan” ad showed up due to a third party that has nothing to do with Teri.com. They are wrong, they should be sending such a “cease and desist” letter to that third party, whomever it is Dell, Gateway, or whatever ISP that is doing this. Talk about extreme reverse hijacking.
This to me is not only wrong and unethical, but even a harassment to the owner of Teri.com.
Another thing is, a first “cease and desist” letter should be just that, a letter telling whomever to stop using the domain name for that particular purpose, and not ask for the transfer.
Given that C&Ds aren’t even required to be sent to begin with, there’s no requirement that such remain that only. But yeah, it would be nice if it’s only used to get the other party to cease and desist.
Hmm, better change that to cease, desist and transfer…or else.
@ John – I think you’re assuming the law firm understood what was going on. They clearly didn’t.
@ Dave – you’re correct. I think most C&Ds for domain names that are infringing include a request to transfer the domain.
I have also just gotten one of these letters and they are no fun! good luck!