State Farm sues LV man over Internet name

Grace Leong

Wednesday, Sept. 29, 1999 | 11:53 a.m.

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. sued a Las Vegas man, Brian Evans, alleging he infringed State Farm's trademark rights in cyberspace by registering and using its domain name to point to his personal website, and by allegedly offering State Farm's domain name for sale.

The District Court suit said Evans used the "statefarmonline.com" domain name to point to a webpage where he was offering his own goods and services for sale.

"State Farm believes Evans' main motivation is to extract money from rightful trademark owners," said William Dietz, State Farm's attorney.

State Farm, of Bloomington, Ill., is seeking a restraining order prohibiting Evans, who allegedly received the domain name "statefarmonline.com" on Aug. 19, 1999, from Network Solutions Inc., the main registrar of ".com" domain names, from using or selling its domain name, until a preliminary injunction hearing is held.

It said it feared its business could be irreparably damaged if its domain name was sold to a third party in a country that didn't adequately protect the rights of its owner.

It alleged Evans' unauthorized use of its trademark "adversely affects its ability to control the nature and quality of products and services provided under the State Farm trademark and places its reputation in Evans' hands."

Evans, a Las Vegas entertainer, denied the allegations.

"Someone had stolen my passcode to access the manager section of my store.yahoo.com website to register hundreds of domain names with Network Solutions Inc. (the main registrar for '.com' domain names). This automatically directs the domain names registered to my website, thecrooner.com, which gives them the impression that I registered the names."

"The bizarre thing is that the person who registered the domain names could do it without a credit card number," he said.

"So there's no way of tracking who registered the names, and no way of proving that I did, or didn't," Evans said.

"Why me? They might as well say that I'm the second gunman on the grassy knoll," Evans said. "If I wanted to register domain names, I wouldn't be stupid enough to use my own name and address. That's just going to invite lawsuits. It's obvious the person who registered the domain names is doing this just to harass us."

State Farm accused Evans, whom the suit said faced cybersquatting allegations filed last month in California, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Maryland, of registering and using domain names that incorporate the trademarks of well-known companies, and then threatening to sell these to third parties if the rightful trademark owners refused to pay him.

Evans, who does business as Domain by Brian Evans, Brian Evans Domains, Crooner Brian Evans and The Domain Train, was sued for alleged deceptive trade practices by Hilton Hotels Corp., 3M, Reed Elsevier Inc. and Marriott International, the suit said.

But Evans said Hilton and the Marriott have dropped the suits against him and he was in the process of transferring the domain names of the other companies back to them.

Marriott's attorney, Michael Grow, could not be reached for comment.

"If there was any truth to those charges, the Hilton and Marriott would be getting my jugular now and not dropping the suits," he said.

The suit, however, said 3M had obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting Evans from selling or transferring its domain names "3monline.com" and "canadaposte-itnotes.com." The suit also said State Farm employee Bob Reiner had received an e-mail with a subject line reading "www.statefarmonline.com" that stated: "This domain is for sale. We've been offered an amount by a third party that prompted us to do a search on the Internet to see if there may be another company interested in the name for purchase. You can own the above name for $10,000."