Here is an article for those who use trademarks in their domain name. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/technology/companies/25verizon.html
This suit is a far cry from the average person who uses a trademark in a domain name. In addition, nobody tried to defend the lawsuit and it resulted in a default judgment. Lastly, the company being sued had a history of purposely registering hundreds or thousands of infringing names. That being said, there is always a risk when using a trademark term in a domain name and everyone should be cautious or obtain legal advice before doing so.
Verizon has been awarded $33.15 million from OnlineNIC arising out of the OnlineNIC's cybersquatting activities. According to Verizon's 480+ page complaint filed in June, 2008, the San Francisco-based OnlineNIC is a domain registrar that registered over 600 domain names like iphonefromverizon.com, itunesverizon.com, and treoverizon.com. No one from OnlineNIC appeared answer the complaint, so 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," Verizon said in a press release. http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2008/court-awards-verizon.html
Heh, and Verizon is going to get...what, I wonder? It's not really that groundbreaking as Verizon purports it to be. Even though OnlineNIC has a California address, I doubt Verizon will have much use for just their registrar accreditation if the bulk of their assets are beyond their reach.
that is so lame. I don't think that verizon should be able to sue them just for have domains unless that are misrepresenting them and actively trying to discourage customers for verizon with the domain names
It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Verizon does to collect on its judgment. Even though OnlineNIC is supposedly based in California, I wouldn't be surprised if its assets were located elsewhere. Though, one set of assets they can't hide is their domain name portfolio
Well companies like OnlineNIC are responsible for those parked domains and I find it disappointing that the domain I want to buy has been taken over already. Good lesson taught to them !
thats crazy. ah well. crazy they got sued for having PARKED domains. dont make sense. they werent using them for anything profitable to them.
yeah same here I can't believe they own random domains that aren't even worth anything, I contacted them for a domain they had parked and they wanted $800.