RSSVerizon wins $33M in no-show cybersquatting case
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published December 29, 2008, 11:42 AM
Although it might have a tough time locating the perpetrators and collecting the loot, Verizon has been awarded $33.15 million in a court judgment touted as the biggest in cybersquatting history.
Verizon has won $33.15 million in a lawsuit against OnlineNIC, in which the San Francisco-based domain registrar was accused of both trademark infringement and cybersquatting.
A default judgement of $50,000 for each of 663 addresses registered by OnlineNIC was issued on Dec. 19 in US District Court in San Jose, Calif. Verizon accused the domain registrar of registering names like itunesverizon.com and iphonefromverizon.com to intentionally confuse Web users.
However, nobody from OpenNIC even made an appearance in court to answer Verizon's charges.
Due to OpenNIC's no show, 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 Web sites," according to a Verizon legal filing.
Verizon's attorneys also maintain that OnlineNIC has gone well out of its way to hide the identity of itself and its employees, by using "numerous shell-entities [and] fictitious business and personal names" in addition to deceptive contact information.
While Verizon contends that the $33.1 million judgment is the largest in cybersquatting history, other gargantuan awards could follow. Yahoo and Microsoft have each filed similar lawsuits, also this year.
This is one time I'm glad a company has won a big lawsuit. OnlineNIC seems to be trying to confuse people and could potentially help spammers and crackers trick people into visiting doctored sites by making it look like they're part of Verizon. You might argue that people should pay attention and should no better. The truth is that we have millions of people online who think that Google or Yahoo are what you go to when you use the internet. My parents still think they have to load the Google page before typing in a new web address.
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they will never collect it...
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Verizon, pfffffftttttt, the worst cell phone service provider in South Dakota.. I will not buy Verizon anything for in my estimation, if it is Verizon it is not worth buying as there cell phone service in South Dakota is horrible........
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Is it Verizon, or just South Dakota? Lots of open area out there. I'm sure a lot of the national carriers have somewhat poor coverage or lots of agreements to get coverage into S.D.
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Have to agree, Verizon here in Nebraska and I don't think I've had a single problem in the year I've had service.
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