Sues Navigation Catalyst for Cybersquatting — Weather Underground
Navigation Catalyst back in court.
Navigation Catalyst Systems, Inc. finds itself in a familiar place: in court defending itself against cybersquatting claims. This time the plaintiff is The Weather Underground, Inc.
Navigation Catalyst distributed a browser plugin for its Fresh.net product that allowed it to capture typo information, which helped spur the firm into alleged massive typosquatting registrations earlier this decade. The lawsuit does not mention this browser plugin, but alleges Fresh.net targeted high traffic web sites, discovered typos, and tasted domains for traffic. It kept the high traffic domains.
The firm has had to defend itself against charges of cybersquatting from such heavyweights as Verizon, Wachovia, and Wynn Resorts.
The Weather Underground successfully won 41 domain names from Navigation Catalyst in a UDRP at National Arbitration Forum last year. Apparently fed up with Navigation Catalyst’s policy of only handing over domains when requested or forced by an arbitration panel, Weather Underground sued on numerous accounts counting violation of the Anti-cybersquatting act.
Any efforts Defendants make to avoid typo-squatting is disingenuous and halfhearted
at best, done only to distract from their unlawful business model which targets high
traffic, and thus often trademark protected, domain names and typographical errors made by
consumers attempting to access the legitimate domain names corresponding to the respective
underlying entity.
The case, filed February 27, is pending in United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan.
