‘Cybersquatting’ law could be tested in N.H. court case

The Boston Globe reports:

What began as a dispute over rock memorabilia sold by a New Hampshire auction house is headed to court, in a case that could test the limits of a federal law designed to protect companies against the misappropriation of their names and trademarks.

Business review sites such as Yelp are often used by consumers to register complaints or praise about products and services. But in this case, an unhappy customer allegedly registered more than a dozen Internet domains that include the name of the company, RR Auction Co., and the names of key employees, according to a complaint filed Tuesday by RR Auction in US District Court in Concord, N.H.

From those websites, which are still live and include rrauctions.net and rrauction.biz, the defendant, Michael Johnson of Bakersfield, Calif., allegedly redirects browsers to his site rather than the company’s real site, rrauction.com. Postings on Johnson’s site assert the company has routinely sold phony memorabilia and that founder Bob Eaton threatened a former employee with knowledge of fraudulent practices before her 2008 suicide.

In an interview at RR Auction’s Boston office, Eaton denied the claims made on the website and said they have probably caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the business he started in 1976. The deceased worker killed herself soon after RR Auction filed a lawsuit accusing her of embezzling at least $111,000. The case was settled, with the worker’s estate paying RR Auction.

The struggle against "homesteading".