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Verizon wins action against OnlineNIC

by on29 December 2008

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$31M verdict

Verizon Communications has been awarded a $31.15 million judgment for damages in a case it brought against domain registry OnlineNIC for cybersquatting. Verizon is the first to win a claim, as Microsoft is also seeking judgment and Yahoo recently filed similar charges against OnlineNIC. 

Verizon filed its action on June 6, 2008 against OnlineNIC for registering at least 663 domain names that were either identical to or confusingly similar to Verizon trademarks. The domain names included verizon-cellular.com and buyverizon.net. Both of those domains have been sold to other companies.

Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San José ruled in a default judgment that OnlineNIC must pay Verizon $31.15 million and transfer the disputed domain names to Verizon, and that OnlineNIC may not register or trade in further domain names containing Verizon trademarks. OnlineNIC did not oppose Verizon’s request for the default judgment.

Microsoft filed its claim on October 7, 2008 with the same court on the grounds that OnlineNIC had registered over 97 domain names that were either identical or confusingly similar to Microsoft’s trademarks; including Windows, Encarta and Halo. Microsoft requested entry of a default judgment against OnlineNIC on December 16th.

Yahoo then filed its claim against OnLineNIC on December 19th, accusing OnlineNIC of cybersquatting and trademark infringement. Yahoo’s complaint listed over 500 domain names it claims are either identical or confusingly similar to its brands, including yahoozone.com, yahooyahooligans.com and denverwifesexyahoo.com. It alleges the disputed domain names were registered by OnlineNIC, either for itself or for ten other defendants, most of them with addresses in China.

Ironically, OnlineNIC is still listed by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) as an approved registrar for the .asia .biz .com .info .mobi .name .net .org .pro and .tel domains. We expect this approval will be yanked soon by ICANN.

Last modified on 29 December 2008
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