United Greeks v. Klein

Citation: United Greeks, Inc. v. Klein, 2000 WL 554196 (N.D.N.Y. May 1, 2000).

Factual Background
Plaintiffs filed suit against defendant, alleging trademark infringement and cybersquatting under the ACPA. Plaintiffs sought a default judgment after defendant's failure to appear, requesting (1) statutory damages under the ACPA ; (2) attorney's fees and costs; (3) an injunction prohibiting defendant from using plaintiff's trademarks "Something Greek," "United Greek," and "United Greeks"; and (4) transfer of the five domain names at issue—"unitedgreek.com," "somethinggreek.com," "unitedgreeks.com," "united-greeks.com," and "united-greek.com"—to plaintiffs. The court held that while defendant's default is a "concession of all well-pleaded allegations of liability," it is not "an admission of damages." The court distinguished the requested statutory penalties from a request for actual damages or lost profits, however, as a determination of the latter two would require an evidentiary proceeding. The court granted $10,000 in statutory damages ($2,000 for each of the five domain names) and ordered defendant to transfer the domain names to plaintiffs. The court also awarded plaintiffs $5,950 in attorney's fees, finding that defendant's default "sufficiently demonstrates the willful cyberpiracy" of plaintiffs' marks.

This page uses content from Finnegan’s Internet Trademark Case Summaries. This entry is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.