The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which hands out the Oscars has filed anther lawsuit against Godaddy under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (“ACPA”).
This suit filed on Novmeber 15, 2013, “supplements a currently pending action between the same parties asserting the same theories of infringement under the ACPA and related state theories that was filed in May 2010, Case No. 2:20-cv-03738-ABC-CW”
This lawsuit names additional parked domain names that were not included in the 1st suit.
The lawsuit is basically about two kinds of domain parked pages one where the domain is resolved to a placeholder of a customer of Godaddy which had PPC ads in which Godaddy kept 100% of the revenue and and the second arising from Godaddy cash parking service which seems to operate like a traditional parking company where the owner of the domain receives a share of the PPC revenues.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences filed a lawsuit against Godaddy on the same grounds in 2010, Godaddy allegedly allowed additional domains to be parked but as placeholders and through the cashparking program.
Earlier this month, the 9th Circuit federal court ruled in Godaddy.com favor in another suit Saying No Such Thing As Contributory Cybersquatting exists Under the ACPA.
Here are the more interesting parks of the suit:
“”GoDaddy has deliberately taken, infringed, diluted and/or otherwise used, without authorization, the Academy’s rights in the OSCAR®, OSCARS® and OSCAR NIGHT®, ACADEMY AWARD®, ACADEMY AWARDS® marks have done so through the registration, license, use, trafficking in, conversion, and monetization of Internet domain names that are identical to and/or
confusingly similar to the Academy’s Distinctive & Valuable Marks.
The infringing domains are “parked pages” that have no legitimate business purpose, display no substantive content, and are used exclusively for the display of revenue generating advertisements.
Defendant derives revenue each time an internet user is directed to an infringing parked II domain and an advertisement is “clicked.”
GoDaddy has been, or attempted I2 to, derive revenue from hundreds of such infringing parked domains which demonstrates its bad faith intent to profit from advertising on domain names that are identical to, or confusingly similar to, the Academy’s Distinctive & Valuable Marks.
GoDaddy advertises and procures customers by offering “free parking” of a registrant’s domain name.
Under GoDaddy’s “Parked Page Service”, GoDaddy will park the registrant’s page and place advertisements on the web page while GoDaddy is granted the right to collect and retain all revenue generated by the advertising.…
