FaceBook Humor Site FailBooking.com Sues Owner of Better Domain Name For Framing Their Content
TechDirt covered a unique twist in domain name disputes last week. Pet Holdings, Inc, the company behind wildly popular websites such as Icanhascheezburger.com, FailBlog.org and Failbooking.com, sued the owner of the domain name FailBook.com because the owner framed PHI’s FailBooking.com site on his FailBook.com domain and put a for sale banner on the top of the page.
Failbook.com owner Cristian Castillo claims that he made a mistake framing the Failbooking.com content but was using it to demonstrate what the domain could be used for while attempting to sell it. Based on statistics sent to us by Castillo the domain seems to be generating around 10,000 unique visitors a day. Castillo is still offering the domain name for sale for $50,000.
As a result of the domain owners actions of framing the content of Failbooking.com, Pet Holdings is claiming cybersquatting, trademark infringement, copyright infringement, unfair competition, and breach of contract. Castillo clearly has the better domain and one that predates FailBooking.com by 3 years, a domain that PHI likely covets but is unwilling to pay $50,000 to acquire.
It’s unclear why PHI sued first and didn’t file a UDRP or simply send Castillo a cease and desist to stop his actions. Posts on TechDirt and the current Failbook site indicate Castillo believes that suing and not sending a cease and desist was over the top. We wonder why they didn’t just go with a UDRP instead. Based on several recent bad UDRP decisions, DNN believes Castillo might be lucky that PHI didn’t go that route. Actions like this seem to be readily pinned as bad faith in a UDRP proceeding, so he’d have lost the domain. As far as we know, PHI still has the option to file a UDRP.
Techdirt makes the argument that PHI shouldn’t be bothered and that in fact Failbooking.com benefited from the traffic from the Failbook.com framing of their site, but others clearly don’t see it the same pointing out that the action could confuse users in to thinking one site was the other. The legal battle seems to have continued in the comments section with both sides making additional arguments. Arm-chairing techies also seem to be chiming in on the issue. Debate centers over whether Castillo’s actions were or were not harming PHI and if the actions were more of a defrauding on potential buyers of the domain.
The case is ongoing and will be interesting to follow and see where this leads. PHI has offered a settlement which calls for Castillo to pay PHI around $8,000, but it doesn’t appear that he is going to accept that any time soon.
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