Plumber: Competitor uses ‘cybersquatting’

May 21, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

A plumbing company has filed a federal lawsuit over alleged “cybersquatting” that directed people who searched for the company’s name online to a competitor’s website.

Ernie Fagnelli has a website, Fagnelliplumbing.com, for his Pittsburgh-based business that was founded in 1963 but said his competitor has bought the rights to a “confusingly similar” shorter domain name, fagnelli.com.

Fagnelli’s attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Gillece Services, the larger competitor, asking it to surrender the domain name and stop directing people who click on fagnelli.com to Gillece’s website.

Gillece on May 4 stopped using the domain name to redirect Internet traffic to its website but has refused to surrender the domain name. Fagnelli is alleging trademark infringement in his lawsuit.

Fagnelli’s lawsuit contends Gillece registered the fagnelli.com domain name March 1, 2007, and then arranged to have Web traffic to that site redirected to Gillece starting Feb. 12, 2009.

Fagnelli said he learned about the situation only when a family friend called him, wondering if he had sold out to Gillece.