GoDaddy won’t be able to thank the Academy for these Oscars.
GoDaddy is being sued in a California court, by AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The culprit: numerous domain names that contain AMPAS trademarks, which GoDaddy is accused of monetizing through its parking program.
In a shocking decision, GoDaddy has been denied ‘safe harbor‘, as they are profiting from the traffic of domains such as Oscarbets.com, Oscarsornot.com, Traveloscar.com and others.
Currently, these domains are removed from the GoDaddy parking system.
Judge Audrey Collins refused GoDaddy’s petition for ‘safe harbor’, by agreeing with AMPAS that GoDaddy did not simply function as a domain registrar, when it allowed users to park domains that were infringing on trademarks.
The date for the trial has not been decided yet, but it is expected to take several months before it’s handed to a jury; it could be a ground-breaking decision regarding how parking companies can be held liable for profiting from trademarks.
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