Sex.com Lawsuit: firm demands domain name over copyright and trademark claims
Firm demands ownership of Sex.com to settle claims of trademark and copyright infringement.
Sex.com is one of the most valuable and storied domain names of all time. A battle over its ownership has resulted in multiple lawsuits, a fugitive hunt and millions of dollars in transactions.
The domain name most recently sold for $13 million in 2010.
Now a lawsuit is demanding transfer (pdf) of the ownership of the domain name based on copyright and trademark claims.
Hydentra Hlp Int. Limited, dba MetArt, has sued the owners of the site for allegedly hosting copies of its copyrighted material, as well as using its trademarks in meta tags to attract surfers through search engines.
Since Sex.com is set up as a Pinterest for Porn, hosting lots of porn images, its unsurprising that such a suit popped up.
Among Hydentra’s demands:
That Defendants be ordered to transfer the domain Sex.com, and all similar domains held by Defendants found in discovery, such as misspellings of the enumerated domains, domains held by Defendants linked to www.sex.com, and the content therein to Plaintiff.
Clover Holdings Limited, one of the defendants, bought the domain name in 2010. But the ownership of Clover Holdings has remained a mystery, with interviews not identifying the people behind the site. The lawsuit alleges that Maximum Apps Inc., a Canadian firm, “owns and operates Sex.com” in conjunction with the other defendants. Frédéric Valiquette is a director of that firm.
