Company asks court to hand over dozens of domains it says infringe its trademarks.
BlackRock Finance (NYSE:BLK) has filed an in rem lawsuit against 32 domain names.
The financial company alleges (pdf) that the domains are used for many nefarious purposes. For example:
With respect to the BLARCKROCK .COM domain, the domain registrant and/or an individual acting in concert with the registrant used an email address emanating from the domain name to misrepresent him/herself as a BlackRock employee to BlackRock’s clients. The fraudster sought to misdirect payments intended for BlackRock, by directing BlackRock’s clients to send future wire payments to accounts that had no association with BlackRock.
With respect to BLACKROCKINDIA .NET, the domain registrant or an individual acting in concert with the registrant used the domain to set up a website and social media accounts posing as a trading platform. At least one consumer lost money when he “invested” through the fraudulent website, falsely believing it to be affiliated with BlackRock. On information and belief, other Defendant Domain Names are being used or were registered with the intent to be used for similar fraudulent schemes.
Other domains have been used for pay-per-click links and to distribute malware.
In addition to targeting the BlackRock trademark, some of the domains include terms related to the company’s Aladdin portfolio management software.
Trademark lawsuits are really hard to win if the other company has something totally different as a business
Good luck, just like years ago when 2600 was a popular magazine. They listed all the F Verizon website links and Verizon couldn’t do anything about it. I’ll go register BlackRockOfficial.com and nothing they can do about it.