Verizon has been awarded $33.15 million in a lawsuit against domain aggregator OnlineNIC who registered hundreds of domains containing Verizon trademarks. Microsoft and Yahoo currently also have filed similar charges against OnlineNIC.OnlineNIC registered 663 domain names such as verizononline.com, myverizonwireless.com and iphoneverizonplans.com. The sites were allegedly created to confuse users. The sites ran pop-ups and links to earn revenue. No phishing or any other type of fraudulent activity was reported in the suit filing.
Verizon has one small problem. They don't know exactly who to collect the funds from, or who exactly OnlineNIC is. There was no representation in court on OnlineNIC's behalf, and Verizon has been unsuccessful in hunting down the company or anyone affiliated with OnlineNIC.
OnlineNIC has been thouroghly succesful in hiding its owners' identities by using shell entities and false personal names for ICANN registration. Verizon had to report in court that they were unable to find an address for the company to serve a proper court summons. So, basically they won a court hearing against an undefended defendant because they were to lazy or not smart enough to find the defendant. I'm not lawyer, but that really doesn't seem right.
If this is the way our court system works then why don't we just try all criminals without the right to defend themselves. That would make the prosecutions job a lot easier.
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