Allegations Fly at Registerfly
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Registerfly.com may not be a very big company, but an extremely ugly falling out between the owners of the registrar of Web site domain names is causing a major headache for 200,000 site owners who registered their sites through it.
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Microsoft has sued domain name registrar Red Register claiming that it is illegally profiting from Microsoft&#39;s trademarks.In a lawsuit filed in Seattle earlier this month Microsoft alleges that Red Register snatched up 125 domain names, all &quot;confusingly similar to Microsoft&#39;s Marks&quot; in order to profit from Web advertising, a practice known as typosquatting and cybersquatting.Web surfers may be tricked into clicking on ads on these sites &quot;because the person finds it easier to click on the advertisement or hyperlink than to continue searching for the Microsoft site, or because the person mistakenly believes Microsoft has authorized or endorsed the advertisements,&quot; the filings state.Typosquatting is the practice of registering domain names that contain misspellings of trademark terms. Cybersquatting is the registration of a variant of trademark.Red Register owns domains such as windowslivecare.com, msnmesnger.com, and ageofmathology.com, Microsoft said in court filings.Microsoft is seeking to take control of the Red Register domains and is asking for the court to fine the company for unspecified damages. The lawsuit was filed Dec. 4 in King County Superior Court in Seattle.Although the domains are now registered to a Tortola, Virgin Islands, company named Versata Software, they were previously registered to Red Register and Microsoft believes the current Versata registration information to be false, the filings state.Domain registrars historically made money by registering domain names to third parties, but that has changed as it has become easier to get into the domain name game. Now many registrars have begun to amass portfolios of domains themselves, or even temporarily registering domains and then dropping them before they are required to pay any fees, a practice called &quot;domain tasting,&quot; said Karl Kronenberger, a partner with Kronenberger Burgoyne LLP, a law firm specializing in Internet disputes.Some companies have even set up several domain name registrars and they pass their domain names from one to the other without ever having to pay fees. This is possible, because domains can be held for three days before any fees are due, Kronenberger said.Registrars must be accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the group that oversees the Internet&#39;s domain name system, but once that has happened they can get better access to the database of domain names. Companies like Microsoft and Google have become accredited registrars for this reason.There are presently more than 1,000 registrars worldwide, according to Kronenberger. &quot;It costs US$8,000 per year to maintain your existence as a registrar,&quot; he said. &quot;once you pay that, you can register domains very cheaply.&quot;Some registrars have amassed valuable portfolios without running afoul of trademark law, but Microsoft&#39;s Red Register lawsuit is not unprecedented. In October, Yahoo filed a similar lawsuit against Belgium Domains . One month later another lawsuit was filed against Belgium Domains, this time by Dell.Kronenberger said the Microsoft lawsuit &quot;seems to be a pretty straightforward case of a registrar registering large batches of domains containing trademarks.&quot;Microsoft has filed at least five other similar lawsuits in recent years. In March it announced that reached a $2 million settlement against Jason Cox of New Mexico and Newtonarch LLC. It also announced a $1 million settlement in a similar suit against Partner IV Holdings.Microsoft and Red Register did not immediately return e-mail seeking comment for this story.&#160;
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Complaint lodged about party allegedly under-reporting value of shadow cabinet flights
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It appears software vendors and their customers are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to newfangled licensing techniques.
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Network Solutions, a major registrar of Internet domain names, counters accusations it's grabbing domain names after customers show an interest but before they register them.
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Morgan Stanley employees mined the CareerBuilder.com website for personal data such as phone numbers to make cold calls pitching financial products, Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin alleged in a complaint filed yesterday.
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Application that claimed to "spam the spammers" caused much controversy.
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Facebook is suing seventeen people and a Canadian Internet porn company for allegedly trying to mine the popular social networking site for its users&#39; personal details.Facebook alleges that in June servers controlled by the defendants used automated scripts to make more than 200,000 requests for personal information stored on Facebook&#39;s site. The allegations are contained in an amended lawsuit filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California.The company first filed suit back in June, but amended the complaint this month after obtaining court orders to identify who controlled the servers trying to access its site.Experts have warned people against publishing too much personal information on social networking sites for fear it could be collected and then abused by fraudsters.Facebook, one of the most-used social networking sites after MySpace, said the automated scripts caused error messages to be generated, but the company did not say if user information was successfully collected.Named in the suit is Istra Holdings, which controls SlickCash.com, an affiliate advertising business that offers commissions to Web publishers for referring Internet surfers to its portfolio of adult sites.It also names Brian Fabian and Josh Raskin, both of whom the suit says work at Istra in Toronto, and Ming Wu of Markham, Ontario, as well as 14 other unidentified people.Facebook said the hacking attempts cost it at least US$5,000 to investigate. The company has requested a jury trial and is seeking to bar the defendants from accessing its computer systems in the future, in addition to damages.&#160;
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Ex-chip maker whips out bus snooping infringement claim
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A volley of lawsuits was launched against alleged spammers on Thursday by the four major US Internet service providers. This includes a case brought by AOL against twenty individuals accused of spimming, or
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SecurePoint's decision to hire the alleged author of the Sasser worm has upset a software partner.
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The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles is warning customers about an online scam intended to trick them out of their credit card information and their money.
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By Chris Parker, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.  May 24--Schuylkill County's district attorney will determine whether charges should be filed because the Republican controller candidate took over Internet domain names referring to his Democratic opponent.
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WholeSecurity's new software claims to identify fraudulent sites.
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By Linda N. Weller, The Telegraph, Alton, Ill.  Jun. 24--ALTON -- Police charged an airline pilot, a minister, a church deacon, a Maytag repairman and 15 other people in a recent two-day prostitution sting, with some "johns" setting up dates via the Internet.
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Companies are accused of billing small businesses and nonprofits for "free" trials of Web site services.
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The vendor adds to its growing list of spam lawsuits one aimed at a service provider that hosts spammers. By Thomas Claburn. Cheapbulletproof.