Verizon wins $33.2 mil judgment over Web addresses

Verizon Communications Inc. was awarded $33.2 million in a lawsuit against an Internet-services company it claimed registered hundreds of domain names with Verizon trademarks to confuse customers.

The default judgment of $50,000 for each of 663 addresses registered by OnlineNic Inc. was issued Dec. 19 by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose, California. Fogel froze OnlineNic’s assets and ordered the transfer to Verizon of all identical or confusingly similar addresses.

Verizon, the second-biggest U.S. phone company, sued OnlineNic in June, accusing the San Francisco-based company of trademark infringement and illegal “cybersquatting,” or registering addresses to intentionally confuse Web users. Such knockoff names often take users to pages that advertise competing products, Verizon said.

New York-based Verizon, sought as much as $66.3 million in damages over names that included myverizionwireless.com, iphoneverizonplans.com and verizon-cellular.com.

OnlineNic registered more than 900,000 domain names similar to some of the world’s biggest companies, including Google Inc., and Yahoo Inc., Verizon said in court papers.

OnlineNic’s Web site says the company has been an accredited registrar since 1996 for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the organization that oversees the functioning of the Internet.

The case is Verizon California Inc. v. OnlineNic Inc., 5:08-cv-02832, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).