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Man appeals after court orders Pru.com transferred

by — Policy & Law 7 Comments

The former owner of Pru.com has appealed after a court determined that he was cybersquatting on Pru.com.

An image of justice with scales and the words "lawsuits"

A man in China has appealed a summary judgment ruling that forced him to transfer the domain Pru.com to the insurance and financial company Prudential.

Frank Zhang, a Chinese citizen, said he bought the domain from a Texas company in 2017 for about $100,000.

Prudential filed an in rem anti-cybersquatting and trademark infringement case against Pru.com last year. The company has trademarks for pru.

At the end of June, the judge found in favor (pdf) of Prudential’s request for summary judgment on the issue of cybersquatting. The domain was subsequently transferred to Prudential.

The judge found that the facts favored Prudential on all nine of the factors in the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA).

While there was certainly some evidence against Zhang, GoDaddy’s default landing page also hurt. The judge pointed to links on the landing page pointing to Prudential’s competitors and a message asking people, “Would you like to buy this domain name?”.

The links were default pay-per-click links that GoDaddy profits from, but the judge said he had the option to have them removed. And the “buy this domain?” link is a promo for GoDaddy’s domain buying service.

Making matters worse, the links didn’t show to visitors in China, so it would have been difficult for Zhang to know about them.

The case was appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Sue the right person

by — Expired Domains 6 Comments

This person sued the wrong entity to recover his domain name. It’s a shame.

A screenshot of ScottRigsbyFoundation.org showing its use for online gambling

Scott Rigsby is right to be upset about how his former domain is being used. But he sued the wrong entity.

In August 2019, I wrote about an unfortunate expired domain name case involving Scott Rigsby.

Rigsby suffered a horrific car accident as a young man. He was dragged hundreds of feet from a pickup. He spent the next 12 years under medical care and underwent 26 surgeries.

He created the Scott Rigsby Foundation, Inc. and set up a website at ScottRigsbyFoundation .org, registered at GoDaddy.

The domain name expired. The person who acquired the domain set up a site that looks similar to the Foundation’s site, but it promotes gambling.

Rigsby blamed GoDaddy for the expiration and subsequently auctioning the domain through its expired domain platform.

It’s an unfortunate use of the domain name. It’s also unfortunate that Rigsby decided to sue GoDaddy over the matter rather than the person who acquired the domain name.

After a couple of years in the courts, the judge dismissed Rigsby’s third amended complaint. Rigsby is appealing.

It strikes me that this could have been settled a couple of years ago for a lot less money. If the goal is just to get the domain back, I think Rigsby would have prevailed with a simple UDRP filing. Barring that, he should have sued the domain registrant.

Instead, Rigsby is trying to convince a judge that GoDaddy is culpable for things like ACPA, which is just not going to happen.

 

After losing UDRP, PureTalk sues to upgrade its domain name

by — Policy & Law 5 Comments

Company tries to get PureTalk(.)com through ACPA.

Logo for Pure Talk MVNO

Pure Talk lost a UDRP, so it filed a lawsuit to try to upgrade its domain from PureTalkUSA.com to PureTalk.com.

Pure Talk, a mobile virtual network operator, has filed a lawsuit (pdf) to try to obtain the domain name PureTalk(.)com. The company uses the domain name PureTalkUSA.com.

This is the company’s second attempt to get control of the domain without buying it. In June, the company filed a cybersquatting claim under UDRP. The panelist denied the claim because the domain was registered before Pure Talk had any trademark rights, so it couldn’t have been registered in bad faith.

Now, the company is trying its hand with an in rem lawsuit against the domain for violating the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). The lawsuit suggests that the domain was transferred to another owner after Pure Talk obtained trademark rights. That argument works in UDRP, but it can be harder under ACPA. I’m not sure why the company didn’t point out the potential ownership transfer in its UDRP.

Intriguingly, the company’s trademark for Pure Talk states a first use date of 2017. PureTalkUSA.com has been used for much longer, though.

The lawsuit also erroneously states that the registry for the domain is “VeriSign, Inc. d/b/a Public Interest Registry” and refers to Public Interest Registry as the registry a second time. Public Interest Registry is the registry for .org, not .com. Verisign is the .com registry.

But the in rem lawsuit strategy might just work. The domain owner needs to show up to defend the domain in court, or the judge might issue a default judgment.

Lotto Sport Italia and lotto company file dueling motions for summary judgment

by — Policy & Law 3 Comments

Did a lotto company buy domains for its business or to cyber squat?

Picture of lottery balls in green, purple, blue and red

A battle over lotto-related domain names is about two-and-a-half years old, and it’s entering a critical period.

Lotto Sport Italia, the soccer apparel company, filed a cybersquatting dispute under UDRP against the domain names LottoStore.com and LottoWorks.com at the beginning of 2017.

The domain names were purchased by a Canadian man who runs a lotto (as in gambling) business. David Dent acquired lottostore.com in September 2016 for $4,820 and then purchased lottoworks.com in December 2016 for $6,500.

Lotto Sport won the UDRP. My take at the time was that this was an end user purchase of lotto-related domain names for a lotto business, but that Dent was not represented well in the UDRP response.

Dent sued to stop the transfer. Now, over two years later, both parties have filed motions for summary judgment in the case.

Will either party prevail in their motions? It’s difficult to say, but looking at this case from the outside, I belive my original supposition was correct: a lotto business bought domain names with the word lotto in them to operate its lotto business. It had no intention of infringing the rights of a soccer apparel company. It strains credulity to suggest otherwise.

We’ll see what the judge has to say.

The soccer company is represented by Marc Randazza. Its motion is here.

The lotto company is represented by John Berryhill and Jeffrey Johnson of Schmeiser, Olsen & Watts. Its motion is here.

Valuable domain name Bespoke.com hit with another cybersquatting complaint

by — Policy & Law 12 Comments

Yet another company called Bespoke wants to get Bespoke.com without paying for it.

Yep, it’s in the dictionary.

When Garth Piesse paid $18,805 to acquire the domain name Bespoke.com in an expired domain name auction in 2014, I bet he didn’t expect to be hit with a couple cybersquatting complaints.

But he has.

First, a Swiss company filed a UDRP and lost. Now, a Louisiana company has filed a cybersquatting lawsuit in U.S. court (pdf).

Plaintiff Bespoke LLC markets custom tours in New Orleans. It was created in 2013.

It claims that Piesse is cybersquatting by holding the generic and dictionary domain name Bespoke.com.

From what I can tell in the lawsuit, it appears that the Louisiana company inquired through a Uniregistry Market landing page about buying the domain name. Piesse responded with an $8.5 million asking price.

The Louisiana company’s lawsuit claims: Click here to continue reading…

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