Citation[]
United Greeks, Inc. v. Klein, 2000 WL 554196, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5670 (N.D.N.Y. May 1, 2000).
Factual Background[]
Plaintiffs filed suit against defendant, alleging trademark infringement and cybersquatting under the ACPA.
Trial Court Proceedings[]
Plaintiffs sought a default judgment after defendant's failure to appear, requesting (1) statutory damages under the ACPA; (2) attorney's fees and costs; (3) an injunction prohibiting defendant from using plaintiff's trademarks "Something Greek," "United Greek," and "United Greeks"; and (4) transfer of the five domain names at issue — "unitedgreek.com," "somethinggreek.com," "unitedgreeks.com," "united-greeks.com," and "united-greek.com" — to plaintiffs.
The court held that while defendant's default is a "concession of all well-pleaded allegations of liability," it is not "an admission of damages." The court distinguished the requested statutory penalties from a request for actual damages or lost profits, however, as a determination of the latter two would require an evidentiary proceeding. The court granted $10,000 in statutory damages ($2,000 for each of the five domain names) and ordered defendant to transfer the domain names to plaintiffs. The court also awarded plaintiffs $5,950 in attorney's fees, finding that defendant's default "sufficiently demonstrates the willful cyberpiracy" of plaintiffs' marks.
Source[]
- This page uses content from Finnegan’s Internet Trademark Case Summaries. This entry is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License 3.0 (Unported) (CC-BY-SA).