Trademark Lawsuit Unethical or Something Worse? — Is this
Trying to get a domain name that existed ahead of your trademark.
I’m a big supporter of intellectual property rights. Unfortunately I’m stuck writing more often regarding lawyers and firms that overstep their bounds.
The latest case: Smart Tax Holdings, LLC. The firm filed a federal lawsuit (pdf) against Marchex for the domain name SmartTax.com.
The plaintiff started using the name “Smart Tax” in 2006 and filed a trademark on it. The trademark was granted in November 2008.
SmartTax.com was originally registered in 2000. It was part of the Ultimate Search portfolio later purchased by Marchex.
So Marchex has owned the domain name since well ahead of Smart Tax Holdings, LLC even started using the Smart Tax term. Yet its lawyer has the gall to write this:
Defendant has not used Plaintiff’s mark coincidentally, but rather chose to associate Plaintiff’s mark with its own website for the sole purpose of unfairly steering traffic thereto.
How can you suggest that a firm is “unfairly steering traffic” to a domain name it owned many years ahead of you existed?
