DigiMedia $100,000 for Reverse Domain Name Hijacking — Court Awards
Domain investor and developer scores penalty against firm that attempted reverse domain name hijacking.
A judge has awarded Scott Day’s DigiMedia.com LP $103,717.66 stemming from a finding of reverse domain name hijacking against GoForIt Entertainment (pdf).
GoForIt made an interesting claim against DigiMedia back in 2006. It filed a cyberpiracy lawsuit over a number of domain names, ranging from WebDesign.com to Recipes.com to Org.com.
GoForIt’s argument? If you navigated to its supposed trademark “goforit” as a third level domain name, e.g. goforit.webdesign.com, it resolved to a parked directory page that took advantage of its GoForIt mark.
Essentially the third level was wildcarded, so anything you typed ahead of the second level domain would pull up a parked page.
GoForIt also sent a letter to DigiMedia’s domain registrar, Tucows, which resulted in DigiMedia’s domain names being locked. This made it difficult for DigiMedia to go forward with a number of domain sales and partnerships that were being negotiated.
DigiMedia counter sued GoForIt entertainment for Reverse Domain Name Hijacking and tortious interference with a contract. DigiMedia won a default judgment, and the judge spelled out the damages the prior week.
