Man in the home of the Alamo sues after losing UDRP for Alamo domain name.
A San Antonio man has sued Vanguard Trademark Holdings USA LLC, which manages the Alamo car rental trademarks, after losing a UDRP for the domain name AlamoClub.com.
John K. Rivenburgh found himself on the losing end of a decision handed down by National Arbitration Forum panelist Maninder Singh. If you read the complaint, you’ll find Rivenburgh’s claimed use of the domain rather plausible. After all, he lives in the home of the Alamo. He even created a site on the domain name that had absolutely nothing to do with the car rental company.
Nevertheless, Singh found against Rivenburgh. Vanguard said the site was showing ads related to car rentals, but that’s a stretch (more on that in a post later tonight).
Rivenburgh says the site receives little traffic.
The suit (pdf) asks for the judge to declare that Rivenburgh is the rightful owner of the domain name.
The suit should halt the transfer of the domain name.
Judge grants Motion to Dismiss against large domain name registrar and its parent company.
The judge presiding over Verizon’s cybersquatting lawsuit has granted a Motion to Dismiss (pdf) filed by Intercosmos Media Group, Inc., directNIC, LLC and Domain Contender, LLC for lack of personal jurisdiction. Domain Contender is a subsidiary of directNIC and directNIC is a subsidiary of Intercosmos.
Verizon argued that the entities had operations in Florida. The court found otherwise:
Verizon argues that the IMG Defendants are subject to specific jurisdiction under the long-arm statute because they purportedly have an office in Florida. However, as pointed out by the IMG Defendants, there is not a shred of plausible evidence in support of this contention.
Verizon pointed to a press release suggesting DirectNIC was opening to open an office in Tampa, but the court deemed it insufficient that a release mentioning future plans for an office proved that an office existed.
Verizon also noted that Donny Simonton, which the company says is CIO of Intercosmos, attended TRAFFIC in Florida in 2007:
In addition, the non-Internet activity alleged (specifically, the presence of one IMG employee at a Florida trade show) does not constitute minimum contacts with Florida.
The companies told the court they are Louisiana entities.
After losing a dispute under the uniform domain name dispute resolution policy (UDRP) in March, a jailbreak iPhone app store has filed a lawsuit in an effort to get the domain name Cydia.com.
Saurikit, LLC has a directory of apps that work on jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches that it hosts at cydia.saurik.com. It also has a U.S. trademark for “Cydia”.
Earlier this year it filed a UDRP to get Cydia.com. The UDRP panel ruled against Saurikit, noting that the domain name was registered six years before Saurikit started using the name Cydia.
The company’s in rem lawsuit against the Cydia.com domain name alleges that the owner of the domain name changed the content of the page from a parked page to one about Apple products after it contacted him.
Although the lawsuit (pdf) goes through details of the plaintiff’s communications with the domain owner, it strangely omits discussion about its domain name arbitration loss.
Fast growing and trendy grocery store chain Trader Joe’s has sued the owner of TJsDeliveryService.com for trademark infringement.
The web site technically stands for “Traffic Jam’s” delivery service, but the site is forward about what it does: delivers groceries from Trader Joe’s directly to your home:
After taking requests from family and friends to bring these products with us when visiting, we realized that folks across the country wanted to embrace the high quality, reasonably priced, and unique items that Trader Joe’s® purveys. As Trader Joe’s® only has approximately 350 stores across the US, many folks do not have a store nearby. Although we’d love to come and introduce ourselves to each of you with a bag full of the amazing Trader Joe’s® products you love, we soon realized that we could simply do the next best thing – ship them to your door.
Trader Joe’s also argues that the web site was designed to mimic TraderJoes.com.
Of course, if Trader Joe’s would just have an e-commerce web site then there would be no need for someone to start a business like TJsDeliveryService.com.
Representatives of domain broker and NBC to be questioned over failed transaction.
Depositions will begin next week in a lawsuit over a failed transaction for Women.com and Women.net.
The suit was originally brought by DONE! Ventures against NBC Universal after the latter allegedly failed to complete a sale agreement for the domain names for $1 million. Sedo was later added to the suit for failing to enforce the agreement.
Next week in Boston Kathy Nielson, Jeremiah Johnston, Tessa Holcomb, and Jeff Gabriel from Sedo will be deposed. Both Holcomb and Gabriel are now with affiliates of PPX.
The following week in New York current and former NBC senior executives Jodi Khan, John Curbishley, Lauren Zalaznick, and Salil Mehta will be deposed.
DONE! Ventures also plans to depose former NBC Universal Chairman and CEO Jeff Zucker, who allegedly was the one to quash the deal.
Another lawsuit shows that domain names are important intellectual property.
I’ve written numerous times about web design companies holding a client’s domain name hostage. Here’s another cautionary tale about domain name ownership.
A Florida company called StableTracker.com, Inc says that its former outsourced tech team has stolen its intellectual property and its domain name (pdf).
StableTracker.com, Inc. says it contracted with the (now) defendants to perform a number of technical tasks including registering its domain name. But the defendant in charge of registering the domain name registered it in his personal name.
After the business relationship went sour, the company claims the defendants stole the intellectual property including software code and domain name. To make matters worse, it alleges that one of the defendants sent an email to an important business partner from StableTracker.com’s email account — using the email alias of the company founder and plaintiff.
Remember, if you control the domain name you control the email.
I think many people overlook how your domain name is an important piece of intellectual property. Make sure you own it.
After losing UDRP, IVX says it will go to court for domain name.
Last week I wrote about Dutch company Besloten Vennootschap IVX Networks Europe B.V. The brand management and global domain name registration company uses the domain name IVX.eu. It filed a UDRP against the owner of IVX.com and lost.
An astute reader has picked up that the company tweeted it will now sue to get the domain name:
shame: lost WIPO arbitration case about ivx.com domain.. Monday to sollicitor: of to file an court suit at official courts Europe!
Now, beside the fact it’s pretty clear the owner of the domain name didn’t target this particular company with his registration of IVX.com, another thing has me scratching my head. The panel wrote that IVX offered $13,000 for the domain name but the owner wanted $15,000.
The company would have saved a lot of money had it just accepted the fair $15,000 offer rather than filing the UDRP, let alone a separate lawsuit.
I’m not sure I’d trust this company’s judgment for domain management.
The owner of a .com domain name has filed a lawsuit (pdf) to get the .co version of their domain name. This is the first such .co federal anticybersquatting lawsuit I’m aware of (although there have been plenty of UDRPs and I don’t think a complainant has lost yet).
Real estate company Sibcy Cline filed the in rem lawsuit against SibcyCline.co.
The firm registered both SibcyCline.com and Sibcy.com way back in 1995. But someone else registered the .co domain name in July last year.
Sibcy Cline sent a couple cease and desist letters to the registrant, who finally responded by saying he’d sell the domain name for $1,500. Sibcy Cline rejected the offer, only to find that the domain name was transferred to another registrant shortly thereafter.
But it has drastically changes its web site to eliminate all references and ads related to mobile phones.
The site is now just a bare bones one page web site with a couple news feeds about cricket and a score board. Gone is the fantasy cricket offering and any attempt to be a “real” web site. But also gone are the many ads for cell phones.
Cricket Communications claimed Global Cricket Ventures was intentionally trading on its goodwill by masquerading as cricket sports site. The site used to have a number of ads for mobile phones. According to Cricket Communications, one of the ads was actually a hard coded Cricket Communications logo placed over a skyscraper banner.
The lawsuit will probably continue to be slowly creep forward given that Global Cricket Ventures is based on the island nation of Mauritius.
But it has drastically changes its web site to eliminate all references and ads related to mobile phones.
The site is now just a bare bones one page web site with a couple news feeds about cricket and a score board. Gone is the fantasy cricket offering and any attempt to be a “real” web site. But also gone are the many ads for cell phones.
Cricket Communications claimed Global Cricket Ventures was intentionally trading on its goodwill by masquerading as cricket sports site. The site used to have a number of ads for mobile phones. According to Cricket Communications, one of the ads was actually a hard coded Cricket Communications logo placed over a skyscraper banner.
The lawsuit will probably continue to be slowly creep forward given that Global Cricket Ventures is based on the island nation of Mauritius.
Fast growing and trendy grocery store chain Trader Joe’s has sued the owner of TJsDeliveryService.com for trademark infringement.
Cricket.com owner Global Cricket Ventures hasn’t formally responded to 