Verizon wins $33M in no-show cybersquatting case

Although it might have a tough time locating the perpetrators and collecting the loot, Verizon has been awarded $33.15 million in a court judgment touted as the biggest in cybersquatting history.

Verizon has won $33.15 million in a lawsuit against OnlineNIC, in which the San Francisco-based domain registrar was accused of both trademark infringement and cybersquatting.

A default judgement of $50,000 for each of 663 addresses registered by OnlineNIC was issued on Dec. 19 in US District Court in San Jose, Calif. Verizon accused the domain registrar of registering names like itunesverizon.com and iphonefromverizon.com to intentionally confuse Web users.

However, nobody from OpenNIC even made an appearance in court to answer Verizon's charges.

Due to OpenNIC's no show, the court "concluded that OnlineNIC's bad-faith registrations of Verizon-related domain names were designed to attract Web users who were seeking to access Verizon's legitimate Web sites," according to a Verizon legal filing.

Verizon's attorneys also maintain that OnlineNIC has gone well out of its way to hide the identity of itself and its employees, by using "numerous shell-entities [and] fictitious business and personal names" in addition to deceptive contact information.

While Verizon contends that the $33.1 million judgment is the largest in cybersquatting history, other gargantuan awards could follow. Yahoo and Microsoft have each filed similar lawsuits, also this year.