In a 29 page ruling a California Federal Court denied Godaddy’s motion to have the case filed by the ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURES ARTS AND SCIENCES, (the Oscars) which was filed in 2010, thrown out, denying Godaddy.com the Safe Harbor that domain name registrars typically enjoy.
DomainNameWire.com reported last week that Godaddy was testing out some new parked landing pages, but this ruling might explain why Godaddy made the change removing pay per click traditional parked page advertising.
Of course since most registrars use or have used pay per click parking to generate ad revenue on expired domain names and placeholder domain names its a huge issue for all registrars.
The Academy is suing GoDaddy for Violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (“ACPA”),and Contributory Cybersquatting.
Basically the The Academy claims that, through GoDaddy’s Parked Pages Service GoDaddy has monetized or attempted to monetize, and therefore “used” and “trafficked in,” domain names that are identical, confusingly similar, and/or dilutive of five of the Academy’s trademarks, with bad faith intent, in violation of the ACPA.
In denying Godaddy’s Motion for Summary Judgement District Court Judge Audrey B. Collins wrote in part:
“The Academy also argues that, as a matter of law, GoDaddy is not entitled to ACPA’s safe harbor provision for domain name registrars.”
That provision creates immunity for “[a] domain name authority” from claims for damages “for the registration or maintenance of a domain
name for another absent a showing of bad faith intent to profit from such registration or maintenance of the domain name.”
As the Court noted in its September 20, 2010 Order resolving GoDaddy’s Motion to Dismiss, this provision shelters only those registrars acting solely in the “registration” or “maintenance” capacity; registrars are not immunized from liability for conduct that goes beyond mere registration and maintenance of domain names.:
GoDaddy argues that the safe harbor provision “appl[ies] to at least some of GoDaddy’s alleged conduct.” But, the Academy stresses that its motion “is limited to the activity related to the Parked Pages Program.” The undisputed facts show that, with regard to its operation of the Parked Pages Program, GoDaddy does not function solely as a registrar.
First, the Parked Pages Program applies to pages already registered with GoDaddy, indicating that GoDaddy has fulfilled its registration role by the time it implements the parking programs.
The Parked Pages Program is distinct from GoDaddy’s registrar function.
Second, through its Parked Pages Program, GoDaddy uses its servers to create webpages for registered domain names, and to place advertising on those pages for which it can collect a fee-per-click.…
