Judge Says Godaddy Is Not Entitled To Safe Harbor Protection On Parked Pages Program
In a 29 page ruling a California Federal Court denied Godaddy’s motion to have the case filed by the ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURES ARTS AND SCIENCES, (the Oscars) which was filed in 2010, thrown out, denying Godaddy.com the Safe Harbor that domain name registrars typically enjoy.
DomainNameWire.com reported last week that Godaddy was testing out some new parked landing pages, but this ruling might explain why Godaddy made the change removing pay per click traditional parked page advertising. Of course since most registrars use or have used pay per click parking to generate ad revenue on expired domain names and placeholder domain names its a huge issue for all registrars.
The Academy is suing GoDaddy for Violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (“ACPA”),and Contributory Cybersquatting. Basically the The Academy claims that, through GoDaddy’s Parked Pages Service GoDaddy has monetized or attempted to monetize, and therefore “used” and “trafficked in,” domain names that are identical, confusingly similar, and/or dilutive of five of the Academy’s trademarks, with bad faith intent, in violation of the ACPA.
