Ad.com Lawsuits

Good Evening Folks!!
The following is a guest post by my friend and partner Howard Neu and his
take on the ad.com lawsuits. Tomorrow it will be my take. It is quite
different. Howard attacks the legal aspects. I attack the industry and others
for forming a circular firing squad. This is much bigger than just the 4
parties.



All of the litigation that has started up due to AOL’s wrongful attempt
to hijack a legitimate generic domain is going to cost the parties huge legal
fees which may or may not be recoverable in court. The U.S. Federal
District Courts have what is known as Rule 11 Sanctions. These sanctions
may apply when a spurious law suit is filed or when there are allegations
contained in a law suit which are false and the falsity of which should have
been discovered by the Plaintiff prior to filing the law suit.




I truly believe that the seller’s law suit is misdirected as the real
culprit (fly in the ointment) (black hat bad guy) is not being sued. AOL
has made spurious claims in a bald attempt to interfere with the sale of the
domain to SKENZO. If this were a WIPO action, it would be obvious Reverse
Domain Hijacking. AOL claims that it has a common law trademark on
Ad.com, but it has never used it in commerce and has never been known by Ad.com.
Slang words for registered domains don’t cut it. If the courts should
somehow agree with AOL, the entire domain structure will come tumbling down and
the aftermarket will disappear overnight.


I can only assume that
SKENZO will join AOL as a third party defendant. Neither the seller nor
the buyer were aware at the time of the sale of any ersatz claims being made by
AOL. Though the domain was previously put up for auction, AOL never
communicated with the Seller or with the auction house MONIKER that it had any
kind of claim. I wonder if it was AOL’s high-priced legal counsel or some
goof-off in the company who decided to make this spurious claim. In either case, Time-Warner needs to take remedial action when the s**t hits the
fan and AOL gets the kind of negative publicity out of all this that will drive
users away in droves


Howard Neu