Business
Verizon wins $33m against trademark-violating domain registrar
Some sleazeball cybersquatter called OnlineNIC, an ICANN registrar which advertises "Domains for Sale: We sell in batches," was hit for $33.15 million for violating Verizon's trademarks 633 times through domain registration, the Register reports.
Some sleazeball cybersquatter called OnlineNIC, an ICANN registrar which advertises "Domains for Sale: We sell in batches," was hit for $33.15 million for violating Verizon's trademarks 633 times through domain registration, the Register reports.
According to the lawsuit filed in June 2008, OnlineNIC used an automated process to claim sites such as verizononline.com, myverizonwireless.com, 123verizonphones.com, accountverizonwireless.com, and iphoneverizonplans.com. The fake Verizon sites hosted ad links and pop-under advertisements that resulted in revenue for OnlineNIC.
In a statement, Verizon said:
The default ruling came in a case filed by Verizon against OnlineNIC, a company based in San Francisco that had unlawfully registered at least 663 domain names that were either identical to or confusingly similar to Verizon trademarks. The court concluded that OnlineNIC's bad-faith registrations of Verizon-related domain names were designed to attract web users who were seeking to access Verizon's legitimate websites and calculated an award based on $50,000 per domain name. Neither OnlineNIC nor counsel representing the company appeared in court in OnlineNIC's defense.