Greg Ricks Responds To C & D Letter By Filing Suit
The Las Vegas Sun, is reporting that Greg Ricks, known to most in the domain community, filed a suit last week in U.S. District Court for Nevada against a company who sent him a C & D letter on the domain DateCheck.com
DCAEV Inc., has a trademark on the term “Date Check” and owns “date-check.com“.
Date-check.com, promotes incall and outcall escorts services around the country.
Ricks registered the domain, DateCheck.com in 1999.
Ricks, DateCheck.com, is going to a landing page, but is not serving up any type of escort service or adult links.
The lawsuit says Ricks received correspondence last week from an attorney for DCAEV Inc. alleging “datecheck.com” infringes on DCAEV’s trademark rights and demanding Ricks stop using datecheck.com.
Ricks responded with a lawsuit, asserting the following:
a. The domain “datecheck.com” registration, predates DCAEV’s use of the “Date Check” trademark in connection with DCAEV’s escort service Web site.
b. There is no likelihood of confusion between his domain name and the use of the “Date Check” trademark in connection with the Web site promoting escorts.
c. DCAEV obtained the “Date Check” trademark by making false or fraudulent representations to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office regarding DCAEV’s assertion that no other firm has the right to use that mark in commerce.
d. Since about June 2008, the defendant decided it wanted to use the “datecheck.com” Web site in addition to the “date-check.com” site to promote its escort directory services and started working with unnamed third parties to hijack the “datecheck.com” name.
The suit seeks unspecified damages, cancellation of the defendant’s trademark and a declaration that Ricks’ use of the “datecheck.com” domain name does not infringe on any of DCAEV’s trademarks.
Ricks has recently lost a couple of UDRP’s for three letter .com BME.com, and LTI.com.
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I love this move. Props to Greg.
Good and in depth article but full of useful information
Whenever I finally meet Greg – drinks are on me! Awesome move! We’ll all be watching how this one goes…..
A similar lawsuit is going on with CERTIPOST.COM where the domain was registered 2 years prior:
http://www.udrpsearch.com/case/D2008-1183
Too bad this didn’t make any of the other blogs. The more people that know there can be consequences to trying to intimidate reverse highjack a domain name, the better. Kudos to this site for picking up on this.
I have at least 3 or 4 (pro-se) lawsuits I too would like to file against overly-zealous intimidating trademark owners and attorneys but having trouble finding out the procedure and how to word the pleadings (which I know need some customization I can do myself).
Have asked Greg several times how I can get a copy of his litigation and also a couple well known attorneys for help on the steps and process involved (and also offered a flat fee for the assisatance) but all to no avail as it appears no one wants to help me for some odd reason.
It’s quite surprising that it’s so hard to get some assistance on this since lawsuits I plan to file will should help other domain registrants in their ongoing battles.
David
All pleadings in federal cases can be found online for a fee:
http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/
hope those guys will be sued badly