Statutory damages awarded to pro se plaintiff in anticybersquatting dispute
David John Carnivale v. Staub Design, LLC, John Staub, and David Staub, Civ. No. 08-764-SLR, December 13, 2010.
Robinson, J. Court rules on bad faith after bench trial.
This dispute centers on the use of the trademark THE AFFORDABLE HOUSE and the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. Defendants were accused of using plaintiff’s mark in their domain name www.theaffordablehouse.com. The court previously granted in part plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment and denied defendants’ cross motions. Plaintiff has proved his mark is distinctive and that defendants’ mark is confusingly similar. It now considers whether defendants acted in bad faith, and finds that they did under the nonexclusive factors identified in section 43(d)(1)(B)(I) of the Lanham act. The court finds that defendants insisted on using the disputed domain name even though it bore no relation to their legal names and had only a tenuous relation to the subject matter of the website. The court awarded statutory damages in the amount of $25,000 in light of the bad faith infringement of plaintiff’s mark.
