Bank sues alleged cybersquatters and phishers.
Morgan Stanley already has the domain names — but it wants more than that.
The bank has filed a lawsuit against the owners of five domain names that it says were used for cybersquatting and phishing.
The company already has possession of four of the five domain names thanks to proceedings at National Arbitration Forum last year. Through UDRP it picked up ms-ae-fund.com, morganstanleyae.us, morganstanleyae.com, and morganstanley-ae.com.
Yet the company has filed suit in Southern District of New York against the John Does that owned the domain names. Morgan Stanley wants to get their identities and hold them accountable. It alleges they provided false whois information, so the UDRP failed to uncover their true identity.
The bank demands a full accounting of how much the perpetrators made off their scheme and pay punitive damages.
You can read the entire suit here (pdf).
Morgan Stanley… F*ck banks, go cybersquatters! VIVA LA REVOLUTION DOWN WITH CORPORATISM!
Couldn’t they just file suit directly rather than go through UDRP? Unless they maybe discovered “evidence” during UDRP what those guys were up to?
Dan,
Not sure what the strategy was. UDRP was probably faster for taking the sites down, but that was many months ago so I don’t understand the delay. They must have found out something in the interim.
uh, harry… whatever is taken from the banks (be it higher prices for domains or in this case money stolen from accounts) all comes out of the pockets of the bank’s customers. eg: you. so next time don’t complain about the “f*n banks” when they put their interest and charges up to cover fraud. yeah i hate them too but stealing from them AND SUBSEQUENTLY US is not something to cheer about.