Companies sometimes find that opportunistic purchasers of domain names (often referred to as “domainers"), will purchase a domain name quite similar to that of the company, and establish a site at the URL loaded with revenue-generating sponsored ads. To accomplish these purposes, domainers seem to prefer the services of companies like HitFarm and Domain Sponsor. A web user types in the confusingly similar URL and is bombarded with pop-up ads and sponsored links to goods and services, often competitive to the company whose name or trademark is being appropriated in the URL.

The Lennar Corporation, an established home builder, noticed that a company called Dauben, Inc., d/b/a “Texas International Property Associates,” set up a HitFarm site at mylennar.com. Dauben’s page purported to feature “resources and information on Floor plans and Building construction.” It also contained a link titled “Home building,” which when clicked on, took the user to another page of sponsored links to homebuilders competitive to Lennar.

Lennar filed suit for trademark infringement in Texas federal court, and sought injunctive relief. The court granted the motion for temporary restraining order, prohibiting the defendant from using, canceling or transferring the domain name to any person or entity other than Lennar, and from using any domain name that incorporated or was confusingly similar to the Lennar mark.

The court held (1) there was a substantial likelihood of Lennar’s success on the merits of the trademark claim; (2) there was a substantial threat that Lennar would suffer irreparable injury if the injunction was denied; (3) the threatened injury outweighed any damage that the injunction might cause Dauben; and (4) granting the injunction would not disserve the public interest.

It looks like this Texas International Property Associates has targeted other companies in the past, and has come up empty handed. See, e.g., WIPO opinion, in which Fry’s Electronics wrestled to get the typo-squatted domain name “fyrselectronics.com”.

[Via Circleid.Com]

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