Last week I read about this case and found it fascinating.

The car you see pictured here is the Ferrari F150, the Italian carmaker’s 2011 Formula 1 racecar named to honor the 150th anniversary of Italy's reunification. You may be thinking that the name “F150” sounds familiar. That’s because it is also the name of Ford’s full-size pickup truck.  And Ford is less than happy that Ferrari is using the same name.

According to The Guardian, Ford sued Ferrari for trademark infringement, eventually forcing Ferrari to use the car’s full name, “Ferrari F150th Italia.” But Ford didn’t stop there – the company is also suing Ferrari for its registration of the domain name FerrariF150.com under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) and is seeking $100,000 in damages. Ford is basically trying to crush Ferrari on this one.

 
If you’re scratching your head trying to picture Ferrari as a cybersquatter, get ready to be thrown for another loop: Ford doesn’t own F150.com or FordF150.com. FordF150.com points to a fan site, but F150.com resolves to a pay-per-click site.

And what does Ford make of Ferrari's Facebook page for the F150?
 
Seeing brand owners go after cybersquatters whose sole business is cybersquatting is standard for us, but seeing two high-profile brand owners fight it out over a domain name is something that doesn't happen everyday.

Brand dilution is a big deal, but so is lots of free press for both companies.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in US v. Kilbride, No. 07-10528 (9th Cir. 2009), upheld fraud and conspiracy charges arising from the defendant’s sending of spam emails containing advertisements for pornographic materials. Key to this ruling was the fact that the spam emails contained false and non-functioning email addresses in the “From” field. 
 
More interesting, however, is the fact that the defendant’s use of a privacy service to block access to the Whois information for the domain names they used for such emails constituted “materially falsified” information as defined under the CAN SPAM Act. Specifically, the Court stated ““It should have been clear to Defendants that intentionally falsifying the identity of the contact person and phone number for the actual registrant constitutes intentionally decreasing the ability of a recipient to locate and contact the actual registrant, regardless of whether a recipient may still be left some avenue to do so. We therefore conclude Defendants had notice that their conduct violated.”
 
You may remember that the New York Federal District Court recently sentenced Alan Ralsky, the self-proclaimed “King Of Spam”, and others to prison terms of several years for their participation in a pump-and-dump stock-trading scheme in which the defendants would artificially and temporarily inflate the price of a given stock by the use of spam emails touting that stock.
 
These cases raise the questions of whether the Federal government is taking a more aggressive approach in its prosecution of spam purveyors within its jurisdictional reach and also what, if anything, this could mean for civil domain enforcement actions.  Even if not subject to the criminal terms of CAN SPAM, cybersquatters on the defensive side of UDRP and ACPA actions could find themselves subject to this more aggressive approach to enforcement. 
 
This could be good news for brand owners since a high percentage of spammers, cybersquatters and others rely on private or false Whois information in their attempts to avoid being held accountable for their illegal actions. 

Since our report a week ago on the hostess.com decision, a claim under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) has been filed in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by Goodwill Industries International, Inc. against Cyber2Media, Inc., the owner of the domain goodwill.com. 
 
As with the word "hostess," the word "goodwill" is arguably a descriptive term.  However, this case is very different from the hostess.com example because the defendant uses goodwill.com to forward visitors to a pay-per-click Web site featuring links to the plaintiff’s site and to other charitable organizations. By using the domain name this way, the defendant appears to be attempting to profit of off Goodwill’s fame as a charitable organization.  By registering goodwill.com and hosting links to charitable organizations, the defendant is likely hoping to take advantage of confused visitors to the site who will assume that the links are approved by Goodwill Industries International. This sort of proof of intent was the missing element in the hostess.com case and seems here to be strong evidence of lack of legitimate use of the domain and the defendant’s registration of the domain in bad faith.

In an interesting side note, the domain savechildren.com was recently ordered to be transferred to the owner of the well-known Save The Children trademark in a UDRP decision which did not make any mention of the potentially descriptive nature of the phrase "save children." In that case, however, the respondent did not file a response and the domain resolved to a pay-per-click Web site featuring links to complainant's competitors and other unrelated products and services.