$100,000 awarded in cybersquatting case

Friday, July 20, 2001 | 10:48 a.m.

A federal judge has awarded more than $100,000 in damages to the Bellagio resort and ordered a California company to stop using its name.

The resort filed a lawsuit to stop Allen Computers, Downey, Calif., and its owner, Mark Denhammer from infringing its Bellagio trademark and violating the Anti-Cybersquatting and Consumer Protection Act.

Bellagio, which offers online hotel reservation services at its website, bellagiolasvegas.com, sued the defendants in May, alleging they illegally used the Bellagio name to offer similar online hotel reservations at their website, bellagiolasvegashotel.com.

U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt said in a July 13 ruling that Bellagio's claims were justified because the defendants were never given permission to offer online hotel registration services for Bellagio and they had not only refused to transfer the domain name to Bellagio, but offered to sell it for $1,000.

"But the most compelling evidence of bad faith in this matter is the fact that the defendants not only refused to transfer ownership of the domain name (to Bellagio), but went so as far to transfer ownership of the domain name to a foreign individual, after the defendants had already received two cease-and-desist letters and had been notified that this lawsuit was pending," Hunt wrote.

Bellagio said it discovered, several weeks after its lawsuit was filed, that the defendants had transferred the domain name to Wilhelm Hubmann, a resident in Denmark.