Lawsuit against ant.com

denny007 · Mar 2, 2011

Abercrombie made lawsuit against "John Does" for bunch of domains - some of them typos but some of them genuine generics. Mosrt valuable domain they are trying to steal is ant.com, I think this domain is so valuable that it might be sole reason to bring this lawsuit (in which are also included domains not registered or domains at SCS corporate doamins = belonging to them).

This domain already had to fight off one UDRP now they will have to fight off this lawsuit (I think it belongs to Slavik). Whenever I see this I am glad I do not own such domains - too many people want to steal it via abuse of US legal syastem...

urlurl · Mar 2, 2011

where is the trade mark issue - its a search engine site??????

Deleted member 83527 · Mar 2, 2011

I don't know anything about Abercrombie but why would they want ant.com?

denny007 · Mar 2, 2011

where is the trade mark issue - its a search engine site??????

Thats kind of point of this post

I don't know anything about Abercrombie but why would they want ant.com?

Because it would be expensive to buy it, try to steal it is much cheaper ?

Here is the lawsuit:
startseek.com/temp/Abershrombie.pdf

silentg · Mar 2, 2011

He got enough TM typos in there. It's going to be an interesting case.

denny007 · Mar 3, 2011

He got enough TM typos in there. It's going to be an interesting case.

There is named John Does 1-13

That means it has at least 13 owners, they can barely link ant.com with any of these domains, but they hope they will fool some old judge or there will be a default judgement and they get million-domain for free.

grcorp · Mar 3, 2011

silentg said:
He got enough TM typos in there. It's going to be an interesting case.

That is precisely what is going to kill their case.

This happened with the domain ufc.ca... the registrant's ownership of typo domains was what worked against him, as that was all the panel needed to prove that he was in the business of profiting off of other companies' marks.

Nobody consider any of this to be legal advice, but all it would have taken is one LLC to hold the risky names, so that when the law gets involved, they've got nothing to do with the ownership of generic names and thus put the ownership of said names in jeopardy.

Just watch A&F list ant.com on Sedo the day after it gets transferred.

denny007 · Mar 3, 2011

This happened with the domain ufc.ca... the registrant's ownership of typo domains was what worked against him

Again - and I can not believe I have to repeat this:
there is NO LINK of owner of ant.com to ANY of others domains in the lawsuit

Do you see some conenction I missed or you just talking whatever comes to your mind for fun ?

Biggie · Mar 3, 2011

Hi Denny

i believe cases like these has brought down value and interest in LLL.com, when compared to NNN.com, who's value once trailed them but now exceeds them.

at one time, to own some LLL.com were top prize for me and many others, now they seem to carry more risk that typo's.

Gerry · Mar 3, 2011

I read the complaint.

John Doe 1-13 indicates that there may be more than one defendant and as many as 13.

A&F has included a large list of infringing domains "alleged" to be under control of these 1-3 John Does.

What I see here is A&F suing "John Does" because of the privacy protection.

I am not sure A&F can do a blanket lawsuit against every privacy protected domain.

These domain names are hereinafter referred to as the âInfringing Domain Names.â A
representative, though not necessarily exhaustive, list of Defendantsâ Infringing Domain
Names is attached hereto as Appendix A.

Because they do not know who owns domains due to privacy added, those defendants are called "John Does".

It honestly appears to me that they are hoping for a decision that sweeps all the names listed into one big judgment WITHOUT verifying ownership of each and WITHOUT any one being in the court to defend themselves.

---------- Post added at 10:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:10 AM ----------

Why ant.com?

Well, it is clear to me that A&F is going to attempt to claim that this is a typo against their stock trade symbol, ANF.

ANF resolves to a legitimate business (pet food) and they would have less chance of this.

So, if someone was to inquire, why ant.com? and there were no defendants actually present at the hearing, A&F could easily say that ANT is a typo of ANF.

Serious, serious attempt at hijacking a very valuable name.

grcorp · Mar 3, 2011

denny007 said:
Again - and I can not believe I have to repeat this:
there is NO LINK of owner of ant.com to ANY of others domains in the lawsuit

Do you see some conenction I missed or you just talking whatever comes to your mind for fun ?

I had thought all the typo names as well as ant.com to be owned by the same parties. I was reading the lawsuit and this thread on 2:46 AM brainpower, so it's likely that I missed something, which, in this case, would be the lack of connection between the owners of said names.

If such is the case, any claim for ant.com in connection with ownership of those hollister and abercrombie typos should be dismissed. It's entirely out of the control of the owners of the latter names, so why should they be implicated? Not considering the fact that they have no legitimate rights to the term.

Gerry · Mar 3, 2011

denny007 said:
Do you see some conenction I missed...

The connection is this:

All listed are privacy protected (including ant.com). Because they are privacy protected and the actual names unknown, therefore they (the defendants) are listed as the defendants John Doe 1-13.

My guess as to the potential 13 defendants is the names listed are held by 13 different registrars or different forms of privacy protected address.

A&F is going to claim that ANT.com is a typo of their stock symbol, ANF. It does not have to be true that it is a typo. But, if it is perceived and presented as being a typo of their stock symbol ANF and there is not a defendant present or represented in the courtroom, then there is great risk of awarding judgment in favor of A&F.

That is the connection:

All Privacy Protected
All listed as John Doe because actual identity is unknown
All domains listed as typos or infringement on the A&F mark and brand.

south · Mar 3, 2011

http://www.ant.com/search?q=Abercrombie&s=search

---------- Post added at 11:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:43 AM ----------

And http://forum.ant.com/showthread.php?4-About-Ant-search-engine

silentg · Mar 3, 2011

south said:
http://www.ant.com/search?q=Abercrombie&s=search

---------- Post added at 11:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:43 AM ----------

And http://forum.ant.com/showthread.php?4-About-Ant-search-engine

It's a search engine. Why don't they go after Google for caching their websites as well.

Gerry · Mar 3, 2011

silentg said:
It's a search engine. Why don't they go after Google for caching their websites as well.

Can Google, Bing, DogPile, Baidu etc be construed or represented as being a typo of ANF, the stock symbol of A&F? No.

Could A&F convince someone that ANT is an intentional typo of ANF? Yes.

Does it have to be true? No...not if no one is present to contest the complaint and the lawsuit.

Start looking at the scenario as it is presented, not as it is. It does not matter if ANT is a search engine. If it is presented as an intentional typo of ANF, that is all that matters in this case.

And it is not the district court's task to validate ownership and legitimacy of each domain listed. It could ask that the complainant validate that a domain is infringing.

A court is not going to dedicate its own resources and manpower to prove the innocence of each domain listed. That would be the task of the defendant and their legal counsel. And if no one is there to defend each name then there is a damn good chance that ANF will convince the court of the illegal intent to confuse ANT as the Stock Symbol of ANF - ESPECIALLY since there is privacy protection attached to this name as well as the others.

denny007 · Mar 3, 2011

i believe cases like these has brought down value and interest in LLL.com, when compared to NNN.com, who's value once trailed them but now exceeds them.

at one time, to own some LLL.com were top prize for me and many others, now they seem to carry more risk that typo's.

Agree, I am glad I did not invested much into LLL.com, I own like 5 or 6 only.
One frivolous UDRP cost me like $15K to defend on domain I paid $7K for.

Of course people like Greg who registered hunderds of LLL.com back in days do not need to give that much fak like people who invested market price buying it later.

---------- Post added at 10:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:46 AM ----------

http://www.ant.com/search?q=Abercrombie&s=search

So with this "logic" you saying i.e. sears can gor for shle.com (when you search Sears on shle.com you get sears ads and Sears ticker is SHLF)

This logic would men no domain can be parked because someone can always construct similar nonsense connections...

south · Mar 4, 2011

denny007 said:
So with this "logic" you saying i.e. sears can gor for shle.com (when you search Sears on shle.com you get sears ads and Sears ticker is SHLF)

This logic would men no domain can be parked because someone can always construct similar nonsense connections...

I am just suggesting that perhaps the complainant might be using this in an attempt to get the name. Guilt by association. If ant.com is displaying links to their own "results" per their faq, then maybe they construe is as a possible way to get the name, or maybe they think some of the names in the results belong to the owner of ant.com also, so could just be going after them all.

I do agree with you, they should not have a legitimate case, just offering possibilities.