Cybersquatters registered domains within days of acquisition announcement.
Capital One Financial Corporation has filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against three domain names related to its planned acquisition of Discover.
Last month, Capital One announced the $35 billion takeover of Discover Financial Services.
The banking firm defensively registered many low-value domain names, such as capitalonediscovered .net and capitalonediscovermobile. biz, but cybersquatters found plenty of combinations available for registration.
Within days, people registered the .com, .net, and .org versions of DiscoverCapitalOne. Capital One filed the lawsuit against these three domain names.
The lawsuit alleges that the .net and .org domains forward to another site that downloads malware to a visitor’s computer.
At first glance, these domains might seem to be fairly low value. After all, Capital One is taking over Discover, not the other way around. But the domains would make a clever marketing slogan for the merger, as the bank asks Discover customers to “discover Capital One.”
Wiley Rein is representing Capital One in the lawsuit.
Samer says
Squatters are scum of the Earth.
I appreciate you reporting this.
On another note, do you think this merger will go through?
Andrew Allemann says
No idea…these types of things draw the attention of regulators.