USA’s largest sports leagues, National Hockey League (NHL), National Basketball Association (NBA) and Major League Baseball (MLB), together with several student sports associations, filed a lawsuit to USA Illinois Federal Court. The elite sports leagues are asking the court to shut down several websites and transfer the domains associated with selling counterfeit goods bearing the trademarks of the plaintiffs to the corresponding sports leagues and teams.
The suit states that unknown counterfeiters have used fake identities and addresses while registering their resources, which makes it difficult to track down the counterfeiters’ identities and prosecute them. The plaintiffs also outline that several domain names used by the counterfeiters are similar to the names of the sports leagues and their trademarks.
The full list of violating domain names is enclosed in the suit, although not disclosed publicly. The plaintiffs are asking the court to force VeriSign, Neustar, Afilias and Public Interest Registry to lock down the domain names in question pending resolution of the case.
