Sues to get Discover merger domain names — Capital One

Cybersquatters registered domains within days of buyout notice.

Capital One Financial Corporation has filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against three domain names related to its planned buyout of Discover.

Last month, Capital One disclosed the $35 billion takeover of Discover Financial Services.

The banking firm defensively registered many low-value domain names, such as capitalonediscovered .net and capitalonediscovermobile. biz, but cybersquatters found plenty of combinations available for registration.

Within days, people registered the .com, .net, and .org versions of DiscoverCapitalOne. Capital One filed the lawsuit against these three domain names.

The lawsuit alleges that the .net and .org domains forward to another site that downloads malware to a visitor’s computer.

At first glance, these domains might seem to be fairly low value. Following all, Capital One is taking over Discover, not the other way around. But the domains would make a clever marketing slogan for the merger, as the bank asks Discover clients to “discover Capital One.”

Wiley Rein is representing Capital One in the lawsuit.