Firm states using the word “collusion” in a domain is cybersquatting

Another facepalm moment for law firm Stobbs IP.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing the registrant of the domain name collusion.so following he received a threat letter from U.K. clothing firm Asos.

The registrant bought the domain name following Rudy Guliani tweeted “#REALNEWS: Woodward states no evidence of collusion.So does Manafort’s team.”

Since Guliani omitted a space, twitter viewed collusion.so as a domain name and linked to it. .So is the country code for Somalia.

The domain registrant forwarded the domain to a site regarding possible collusion between the Trump team and Russia.

Asos launched a clothing line called Collusion late last year. Apparently, it thinks it now owns the word. It sent a cease & desist letter claiming that the owner of Collusion.so is cybersquatting.

I see lots of cease & desist letters fired off based on automated triggers without much human thought. This appears to be one of those. (At least I hope that’s the case.)

Asos is represented by Stobbs IP, a UK law firm that has the dubious honor of being on the wrong end of two reverse domain name hijacking decisions in a single day.