Law firm sues to stop company that it alleges sends misleading trademark notices.
Domain name owners often receive official looking notices by snail mail warning them that their domains are about to expire and asking them to renew. Often times these notices look like invoices and ask recipients to pay very high prices to keep their domain name active.
Back in 2005 two people were fined $2.3 million for one such scheme.
Anyone who has a federal trademark is also familiar with this type of misleading advertisement.
Now a New York law form has filed a federal lawsuit to try to shut down one such trademark renewal operation.
Leason Ellis LLP has filed suit (pdf) against Patent & Trademark Agency, LLC, a company that is listed on the U.S. Patent & Trademark office as one of the groups sending misleading notices. You can see Patent & Trademark Agency LLC’s notice on this site.
One thing that’s interesting about this particular case is that the firm that filed suit claims it was harmed by the practice. While registrars have long complained about domain renewal schemes, it would be interesting if they teamed up to try to shut them down.
walter daniels says
I’m glad that someone is doing this, and publicizing the illegal fraud scheme.