FTC Halts Domain Name Scam
Thousands of Consumers Pay Up To Fend Off
Fictional Poachers
February 15,
2001
The Federal Trade Commission has asked a U.S.
District Court Judge to halt an Internet domain name scheme that dupes consumers
into needlessly registering variations of their existing domain names by
deceptively contending that a third party, acting in bad faith, is about to
claim it. The agency estimates that, at a minimum, 27,000 consumers may have
been victims of the scam. At the agency's request, the court has issued a
Temporary Restraining Order, frozen the defendants' assets, and shut down their
Web sites, pending trial. The FTC has asked the court to bar the scheme
permanently and order consumer redress.
According to the FTC, consumers - many of them
operating small businesses on the 'Net - received unsolicited fax solicitations
stating, "URGENT NOTICE OF IDENTICAL DOMAIN NAME APPLICATION BY A THIRD PARTY."
The letterhead identifies the sender as either Electronic Domain Name Monitoring
or Corporate Domain Name Monitoring. The solicitation warns that an application
for a domain name almost identical to the recipient's has been "submitted to the
National Domain Name Registry (NDNR) for registration," by an unidentified third
party. For example, the owner of a site "www.sobi-sky.org" was told that an
application had been submitted to obtain the domain name "www.sobi-sky.net" The
solicitation says, "Consequently, it is our opinion that this application may
have been submitted in bad faith. . .." The solicitation lists four reasons
someone might want a copy-cat domain name, including "disrupting the business of
a competitor," or intentionally attempting to lure someone else's customers by
creating a confusingly similar Web address. The fax solicitation offers to block
the application by obtaining the copy-cat domain name for the fax recipient for
a fee of $70. It warns that, if the consumer fails to act, "NDNR WILL NOT BE
LIABLE FOR THE LOSS OF DOMAIN NAME LICENSE, IDENTICAL OR CONFUSINGLY SIMILAR USE
OF YOUR COMPANY'S NAME; OR INTERRUPTION OF BUSINESS ACTIVITY OR BUSINESS
LOSSES."
According to the FTC, no third party has applied
for the name, and the information in the fax solicitations is false, in
violation of the FTC Act. An FTC memorandum to the court states, "Defendants
representation that a third party has applied for a domain name by submitting a
registration request to NDNR or any other entity is not only false, but also
nonsensical. As explained in the declaration submitted by Internet Corporation
for Assigned Names and Numbers, 'the purchase of domain names is practically
instantaneous,' meaning there is no period during which an application [for a
domain name] is pending and could be challenged."
The FTC has asked the court to issue preliminary
and permanent injunctions to bar the deceptive marketing practices, to freeze
the defendants' assets to preserve them for consumer redress, and to shut down
Web sites used to promote the domain name scheme.
The defendants named in the FTC suit are Darren
J. Morgenstern, 1268957 Ontario, Inc., and 1371772 Ontario Inc., doing business
as National Domain Name Registry, Electronic Domain Name Monitoring, and
Corporate Domain Name Monitoring. The companies are based in Toronto, Canada, with
an office in Atlanta,
Georgia.
The Commission vote to file the complaint was
5-0. It was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia,
Atlanta Division, yesterday.
Related Documents:
FTC v. 1268957
Ontario Inc., 1371772 Ontario Inc., both doing business as National Domain Name
Registry, Electronic Domain Name Monitoring, and Corporate Domain Name
Monitoring, and Darren J. Morgenstern, individually and as officer and director
of 1268957 Ontario Inc. and 1371772 Ontario Inc.
(Northern District of Georgia Atlanta Division)
Temporary
Restraining Order [PDF 718K]
Complaint
for Permanent Injunction and Other Equitable Relief [PDF 667K]
FTC Consumer Alert
What's Dot and
What's Not
The above article was reprinted from an announcement on the Federal Trade Commission web site dated February 15, 2001. Check the FTC web
site for any changes to the article.
