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Facebook filed a lawsuit against New Ventures Services Corp. / Web.com - Domain Abuse

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Lox

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This week, FB filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania against New Ventures Services Corp. (NVSC), a company that has repeatedly engaged in cybersquatting activities. NVSC registered hundreds of lookalike domain names that could be used to deceive people by impersonating Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Fake domain names are frequently used in many types of scams, such as phishing campaigns, tech support scams and reward scams, to trick people into thinking a site is connected to a legitimate company. To protect people from harm, we regularly scan the internet for domain names and apps that infringe on our trademarks. We identified a large number of domain names that were used or resold by NVSC or its affiliates over the years that could reasonably be used to impersonate Facebook and our services, such as <instagram-login.com>, <facebooked.net> and <installwhatsapps.com>.

read more (facebook)
 
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I just stumbled upon this on my FaceBook feed. Apparently Network Solutions knows a thing or two about preemptively mitigating the risk of trademark infringement.

upload_2021-4-16_11-15-40.png
 
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facebook either owns or has access to a large portfolio of trademarks and patents due to its purchase? of some of microsofts trademarks back in the day

allegedly
 
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If Dan.com were to take down all FaceBook domains, would they need to proactively remove other globally recognized trademark domains? And when does something become globally recognized to the point of a total takedown, does popularity, such as an Alexa metric play a factor? $$$ spent on radio or cable advertising?

I think they should consider to focus more on protecting their platform from the tm listings (obvious tm) and at the same time keep the trust and integrity on a high level. Right now, this doesn't look good / trustworthy.

Regards
 
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The point being, if FaceBook gains the right to shut down any domain FaceBook tells Web.com etc to, doesn't that raise greater concern, of when/how is a trademark officially recognized, and/or how other marketplaces/registrars would be pressured to follow suit?

That's the point. That's why they are doing this.

If Dan.com were to take down all FaceBook domains, would they need to proactively remove other globally recognized trademark domains?

One of the reasons for going after registrars is that there is no need to go after domain market platforms or monetization platforms. If people want to waste their money buying trademark typos on Dan.com, that's more their own problem than anything else.

But, no, Dan.com can list or refuse to list whatever they want. There's no rule requiring them to be consistent. Anyone who wants to sue them for "trafficking" in cybersquatted domain names can also give that a whirl if they want to.

Like any business, you manage legal risk however you and your attorneys think is the best way to do that.

But, hey, has anyone parked a domain name with Oversee.net lately? No.

One of the contributors to the eventual demise of Oversee was that they were turned into a cash machine by trademark claimants.

There's a whole conga line of folks right behind Facebook who will be happy to file the same suit with their marks, in the event that Web.com ends up paying out or giving significant concessions in the event they settle this.

But, on the other hand, there aren't too many registrars running an operations as historically, um, "interesting" as the history of New Ventures Services. I believe they even used to deny it was theirs before they had to disclose their interest in it.

I'd be fascinated to know what the NVSC business is worth, as a portion of the bottom line of Web.com.
 
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interesting read 40 pages pdf - BLOGS IN JUDICIAL OPINIONS

Now, to include it as exhibit in the lawsuit, the plaintiff most likely cross checked the information provided and verified it.

This isn't a judicial opinion, nor is it evidence that has been deemed admissible for any purpose. This is just a complaint. You can attach whatever you want to a complaint. The pleadings in a civil suit (complaint, response) are just the skinny little end of a whole process.

Quite recently, we all witnessed the phenomenon of setting up a website that would automatically generate "affidavits" out of whatever random people wanted to say, and then attaching those affidavits to lawsuits.

Those things are just in there primarily for theater. They aren't essential to any actual count in the lawsuit.

A civil complaint consists of allegations. Actually proving anything comes much later on. Now, there is a requirement that the allegations of the complaint be plausible.

Now, if you are seeking an immediate ruling, like an injunction, and your "evidence" consists of things you invited anonymous people to type into a web form that would generate affidavits out of whatever these random people on the internet typed in, then you are going to have a reliability problem:


So, sure, you can file a lawsuit backed up by "100's of sworn affidavits" from people you don't know and which you have no idea are actually true. Just don't expect to get very far with it.

But nobody gives a crap whether anything in those postings are true. At best, they are evidence of the reputation of NVSC on various domain blogs, but they are not offered for the truth of the statements within them for the purpose of proving any particular claim. They are simply allegations.
 
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This isn’t really about web.com though -
(I corrected the title)

This is about Facebook bringing a large case against web.com in the amount of $27M for owning and cyber squatting on their names

Okay

Say I have a company that sells shirts, and I trademark one of the shirt brands and call it called Smartify.

If a domainer owns smartify .com do I have a claim? Absolutely not. No brand dilution, no consumer confusion, and I don't have TM pull outside of Class 25 unless it causes one of the first two.

How are facebook claiming cybersquatting, unless they're domain names like FacebookSucks, InstagramSucks etc.

Just curious.
 
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Okay

Say I have a company that sells shirts, and I trademark one of the shirt brands and call it called Smartify.

If a domainer owns smartify .com do I have a claim? Absolutely not. No brand dilution, no consumer confusion, and I don't have TM pull outside of Class 25 unless it causes one of the first two.

How are facebook claiming cybersquatting, unless they're domain names like FacebookSucks, InstagramSucks etc.

Just curious.

The names in question have their names in them like you just mentioned ^

one of the names is something like that >>> Facebbok.com ... etc.
 
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The point about blog posts is probably worth elaborating on a bit.

Many, many years ago, before the commercial internet was a thing, and the "internet" consisted primarily of university researchers and government contractors, someone asked "Could email be used as evidence in a court case."

My answer that was along the lines of:

"If I printed out all of my email, rolled it up into a thick tube, and beat you to death with it, then, yes, my email is going to be evidence in my trial."

So, just like when you see "trademark", you should ask "trademark for what?", when you see "evidence" you should ask "evidence of what?"

All of those blog posts, etc, are merely hearsay, if they are presented for the truth of anything which is in them.

The thing they presented as "evidence of" is:

Screen Shot 2021-04-16 at 5.37.54 PM.png


What that says is that "for many years, domain name consumers have complained" about NVSC.

It's not about whether ANY of those complaints were true. It's about the fact that people were complaining.

It is a foundation to, later on, look into how NVSC is run and what is its relationship to the management of the registrars Web/Register/Netsol. NVSC is the alleged cybersquatter. But that company can be rolled up and thrown away with no great damage to the remaining business of Web/Register/Netsol and whatever else has been rolled up into the registrar operation of Web.com.

Maybe a different example would help.

I'm in court and I'm testifying that I think my wife is crazy. A lawyer asks me why I think she's crazy, and I say, "Well, she said she was the Queen of France."

Now, the other lawyer is not going to jump up and say that's hearsay. Why? Because what is at issue is not whether or not my wife is the Queen of France. What is at issue is whether she's crazy. Her statement that she thinks she's the Queen of France is not offered as proof of whether she's the Queen of France. It's offered as proof that she said something crazy.

That's what those blog postings are doing in this complaint. They are simply there as evidence that for many years domain name consumers have complained about the s--t they've been pulling with NVSC for years. But they are not there to prove that any of the complaints were in fact true.

But that's what makes this the cybersquatting suit that everyone can love.
 
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Did Facebook ever win the NameCheap 1?

Notice, they’re very aggressive protect their IP.
 
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Did Facebook ever win the NameCheap 1?

Notice, they’re very aggressive protect their IP.

... protecting ppl from scammers / fraudsters who try to steal the money or infos etc. For years, FB didn't care much about domains but now ... the security is priority.

Regards
 
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... protecting ppl from scammers / fraudsters who try to steal the money or infos etc. For years, FB didn't care much about domains but now ... the security is priority.

Regards
Still seems like they are in court lot these days.
 
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FaceBook lost ^ and they sued Namecheap again in which the motion is pending

No that is not correct.

A lot of things happen during a lawsuit. You are confusing a ruling on a preliminary motion with the lawsuit itself.

The link you provided is a ruling on a motion to dismiss the complaint. The court granted Namecheap's motion, but provided Facebook the opportunity to amend the complaint (which is fairly normal). Facebook amended the complaint, and the case is continuing on Namecheap's motion to dismiss the amended complaint.

The docket is here:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16931638/facebook-incorporated-v-namecheap-incorporated/
 
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No that is not correct.

A lot of things happen during a lawsuit. You are confusing a ruling on a preliminary motion with the lawsuit itself.

The link you provided is a ruling on a motion to dismiss the complaint. The court granted Namecheap's motion, but provided Facebook the opportunity to amend the complaint (which is fairly normal). Facebook amended the complaint, and the case is continuing on Namecheap's motion to dismiss the amended complaint.

The docket is here:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16931638/facebook-incorporated-v-namecheap-incorporated/

Thank you for the correction ^ so Facebook and Namecheap are still at it, craziness
 
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I wonder if a domain like CaptionsForInsta.com would have ever made it to Facebook/Instagrams legal eye of concern, if for not connected to NVSC.

No, it wouldn't. The point here is to obtain settlement conditions on Web/Register/Netsol that will require them to do what FB (and their friends) want them to do in the future.

If they can get Web/Register/Netsol to agree that they will shut down any names that FB tells them to shut down in the future, then they don't have to mess around with individual domain name registrants.

The Facebook link @Lox cited in the OP basically stated as much...

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/04/protecting-people-from-domain-abuse/
This week, we filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania against New Ventures Services Corp. (NVSC), a company that has repeatedly engaged in cybersquatting activities. NVSC registered hundreds of lookalike domain names that could be used to deceive people by impersonating Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Fake domain names are frequently used in many types of scams, such as phishing campaigns, tech support scams and reward scams, to trick people into thinking a site is connected to a legitimate company. To protect people from harm, we regularly scan the internet for domain names and apps that infringe on our trademarks. We identified a large number of domain names that were used or resold by NVSC or its affiliates over the years that could reasonably be used to impersonate Facebook and our services, such as <instagram-login.com>, <facebooked.net> and <installwhatsapps.com>.

This lawsuit is part of a series we are filing to protect people from domain name abuse.
...

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/03/domain-name-lawsuit/
We regularly scan for domain names and apps that infringe our trademarks to protect people from abuse. We found that Namecheap’s proxy service, Whoisguard, registered or used 45 domain names that impersonated Facebook and our services, such as instagrambusinesshelp.com, facebo0k-login.com and whatsappdownload.site.

We sent notices to Whoisguard between October 2018 and February 2020, and despite their obligation to provide information about these infringing domain names, they declined to cooperate.

We don’t want people to be deceived by these web addresses, so we’ve taken legal action. We filed a similar lawsuit in October 2019 against OnlineNIC, another domain registrar, and its proxy service. Our goal is to create consequences for those who seek to do harm and we will continue to take legal action to protect people from domain name fraud and abuse.
...

https://about.fb.com/news/2019/10/fighting-domain-name-fraud/
In many instances, however, domain name registrars and privacy/proxy services will not investigate or respond to abuse reports, which enables bad actors and delays our efforts to fight fraud and abuse.

This was the case with OnlineNIC and ID Shield, and that’s why we’ve taken this action to stop this type of domain name abuse. This lawsuit is one more step in our ongoing efforts to protect people’s safety and privacy.
 
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And deservingly so it wasn't a one off.
 
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new venture services is not automated processing i think they are handpicks expired domains. most of my netsol domains was grabbed by new venture serv but some was really expired and dropped.

e. g. you registered webcomsucks.com with netsol or webcom and let expire it obviously the new venture serv will not keep it.
 
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Okay

How are facebook claiming cybersquatting, unless they're domain names like FacebookSucks, InstagramSucks etc.

Just curious.

Paypal tried to take Paypalsucks.com from their owners and lost. But the site was a developed site and not a parked domain. If I recall correctly, they were allowed to keep the domain as it was fair use. Same thing happened when Screech tried to get DustinDiamond.com

In the case of Facebbok or whatever site, they might be phishing sites so that's not fair use.
 
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Paypal tried to take Paypalsucks.com from their owners and lost. But the site was a developed site and not a parked domain. If I recall correctly, they were allowed to keep the domain as it was fair use. Same thing happened when Screech tried to get DustinDiamond.com

In the case of Facebbok or whatever site, they might be phishing sites so that's not fair use.

Fair play
 
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