In the largest cybersquatting judgment ever, a federal court in the Northern District of California has awarded Verizon $33.15 million in a case in which an Internet domain registration company tried to take advantage of Verizon and Verizon customers by using Internet names chosen to be easily confused with legitimate Verizon names.

The default ruling came in a case filed by Verizon against OnlineNIC, a company based in San Francisco that had unlawfully registered at least 663 domain names that were either identical to or confusingly similar to Verizon trademarks. 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 websites and calculated an award based on $50,000 per domain name.

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Updates:  UPDATED Jan 08, 2009 9:47 AM PST
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Related topics: Cybersquatting, Domain Names, Law