Owner of CryptoSecurities.exchange goes following CryptoSecurities.com

CryptoSecurities.com was registered in 2013 and the plaintiff’s business was just created this year.

A law firm that created a business on the domain name CryptoSecurities.exchange has filed a lawsuit (pdf) against the owner of the CryptoSecurities.com domain name.

In the suit, plaintiff Castro & Co claims to have “a federal trademark registration, no. 87756075, for the mark CRYPTOSECURITIES”. It also states “Plaintiff has engaged in extensive marketing activities in connection with its mark CRYPTOSECURITIES, and has expended significant resources to develop its goodwill in and consumer identification with the mark.”

There are a few things that might give you pause.

First, the “federal trademark registration” is an application and it was only filed on January 16, 2018. It was also filed on an intent-to-use basis.

It appears that the plaintiff has now started the business on Cryptosecurities.exchange, a domain name that was just registered on February 20 of this year.

Yet Cryptosecurities.com was registered way back in 2013. It’s been under the same Whois privacy service since at least 2014.

The cryptosecurities.exchange website even has a handy timeline explaining that the idea for the business was created on January 2, 2018:

“The Genesis of CSX. Dr. Castro texts Mo Iqbal at 11:41pm stating “You can basically create a stock exchange that’s blockchain-based.”

I’m intrigued how the plaintiffs are going to argue that the domain was registered in bad faith to target its trademark given that the domain was registered so many years ahead of its business was created.