Edmonton Oilers win dispute over invoice fraud

Hockey club wins cybersquatting dispute over confusingly similar name used to perpetuate fraud.

The Edmonton Oilers hockey club has won a cybersquatting complaint it brought to disrupt an invoice fraud scam.

In a dispute before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the team said that the registrant of eBmontonoilers .com was cybersquatting with its registration of the name. The team uses the domain EdmontonOilers.com.

According to the team, the registrant of the domain created email addresses on it that appeared to be from the team in order to send emails to engage in fraudulent financial transactions with the team’s corporate partners.

This type of activity, known as invoice fraud, involves sending emails to organizations that might owe a company money in an attempt to divert the money to the scammer.

Adding credence to the Oiler’s argument, the domain was registered in the name of “Accounts Receivable, edmonstonoilers.”

The perpetrator did not respond to the dispute, and the WIPO panelist agreed (pdf) that the domain should be transferred to the Oilers.

Greenberg Traurig, LLP represented the Oilers in its dispute.