Back against cybersquatters and unauthorized apps with federal lawsuit — Temu fights

Temu goes following cybersquatters with federal lawsuit.

Temu logo in orange block

The owners of the shopping app Temu have sued cybersquatters and purveyors of unauthorized Temu apps.

Whaleco, Inc., d/b/a Temu, a subsidiary of Pinduoduo Inc. (NASDAQ: PDD), filed the suit (pdf) in U.S. District Court in Illinois this stretch.

Temu is a very popular shopping app that offers cheap goods directly from sellers, using the slogan “Shop like a billionaire.” It was advertised extensively during this year’s Super Bowl.

The firm alleges that people are cybersquatting with the domains temuh .com, temumore .com, and temu-shopping .com.

While the first domain name could reasonably be used for a purpose other than imitating Temu, the firm states the domain was previously forwarded to the site dashmee .com, which offered cheap goods. Both temuh .com and dashmee .com now forward to Google’s public DNS service, so the use has subsequently changed.

Whaleco also alleges that the owners of a number of websites are infringing its trademarks by offering unauthorized versions of its app.

Also on the wire