Facebook sues for domain names
By Ferraiuoli LLC
Facebook and its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp sued New Ventures Services, Corp. (NVSC) for the registration of over 70 infringing domain names. The complaint, filed in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, states that NVSC registered the domain names in bad faith seeking to take advantage of Facebook’s goodwill, fame and trademarks.According to Facebook, domain names such as facebbock.com, facebookbusinessleads.com, httpinstagram.com and instagram-login.com are “identical or confusingly similar” to several Facebook trademarks, looking to confuse Internet users about their origin while also tricking them to visit websites flagged for suspected phishing and other nefarious website activities.
Facebook claimed that the defendants have performed this type of conduct before and they purportedly have a history of “working in active concert with related entities in order to profit in bad faith from the registration, trafficking in, and use of trademark-based domain names”.
