Petronas is a major oil and gas company located in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia and GoDaddy is the world's largest domain name registrar. After
a third party registered the domain names "petronastower.net" and
"petronastowers.net" and then used GoDaddy's domain name forwarding
service to direct the disputed domain names to an adult entertainment
web site, Petronas filed suit against GoDaddy alleging contributory
cybersquatting under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, 15
U.S.C. 1125(d). The district court granted summary judgment in favor of
GoDaddy.
The court affirmed, holding that the Act did not include a cause of action for contributory cybersquatting because:
(1) the plain text of the Act did not apply to the conduct that would be actionable under such a theory; (2) Congress did not intend to implicitly include common law doctrines applicable to trademark infringement because the Act created a new cause of action that was distinct from traditional trademark remedies;
(3) allowing suits against registrars for contributory cybersquatting would not advance the goals of the statute.
[Source: http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/12-15584/12-15584-2013-12-04.html]
According to US court, GoDaddy was not liable for a form of trademark infringement. The court ruled that Go Daddy had not used the domains and was therefore not liable for cybersquatting under the terms of ACPA.
In my opinion, although GoDaddy just provided the infrastructure to the registrant to route the disputed domains to the website of his choosing, GoDaddy should filter before letting anyone to register for a domain name with trademark. However, there is no law to enforce such therefore there are still many cybersquatter are taking advantange.
The court affirmed, holding that the Act did not include a cause of action for contributory cybersquatting because:
(1) the plain text of the Act did not apply to the conduct that would be actionable under such a theory; (2) Congress did not intend to implicitly include common law doctrines applicable to trademark infringement because the Act created a new cause of action that was distinct from traditional trademark remedies;
(3) allowing suits against registrars for contributory cybersquatting would not advance the goals of the statute.
[Source: http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/12-15584/12-15584-2013-12-04.html]
According to US court, GoDaddy was not liable for a form of trademark infringement. The court ruled that Go Daddy had not used the domains and was therefore not liable for cybersquatting under the terms of ACPA.
In my opinion, although GoDaddy just provided the infrastructure to the registrant to route the disputed domains to the website of his choosing, GoDaddy should filter before letting anyone to register for a domain name with trademark. However, there is no law to enforce such therefore there are still many cybersquatter are taking advantange.
