Las Vegas Switch data center in trademark dispute

Courtesy Switch

Switch, a high-tech company that started 11 years ago in Las Vegas, now houses digital data for a number of Fortune 500 companies and the U.S. government in its expansive facilities.

Switch Communications Group LLC, operator of a big data center in Las Vegas, sued a Canadian man on Wednesday in what it calls a trademark dispute.

Switch charged in the suit that Dorian Banks in Vancouver, British Columbia, infringed on Switch’s trademarks when Banks registered the switch.net Internet domain name last month.

Switch Communications Group said in the lawsuit it operates the "world’s most powerful data center and technology ecosystems" and has a website at switchnap.com.

Besides the trademark claim, the lawsuit also alleges that Banks violated the federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act because Banks had a "bad faith intent to profit from registering, trafficking in or using a domain name or mark that is either identical or confusingly similar to a distinctive mark" or a famous mark.

Switch charged in the lawsuit that after registering the switch.net name on Oct. 15, Banks contacted the Las Vegas Switch company and offered to sell it the domain name for about $3,700.

"While plaintiff evaluated the offer to negotiate the purchase of the domain name, defendant threatened to sell the domain name to another entity if plaintiff did not hurry and open escrow to buy the domain name," charged the lawsuit filed in federal court in Las Vegas by attorneys at the Las Vegas office of the law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP.

Switch in the suit asks the court for a restraining order requiring Banks to stop using Switch Communications’ names and trademarks and that the domain name registrar transfer the switch.net name to Switch Communications.

Banks, in an interview, denied the allegations of trademark infringement and cybersquatting.

Banks said he is CEO of Metrobridge Networks International Inc., a wireless Internet provider, http://www.metrobridge.com/index.asp and that he had never heard of the Las Vegas company when he bought the switch.net name at an auction.

He said the switch.net domain name was locked down after the auction because of a protest by a third company in Switzerland called SWITCH http://www.switch.ch/, which offers services to Swiss universities and Internet users.

Banks said that after the Swiss company objected to his registration of the switch.net name, he offered to sell it to the Las Vegas company for what he paid for it.

That way, he said, the Las Vegas company could try to gain control of the name and he could quit worrying about the dispute.

Asked about being branded in a lawsuit as a trademark infringer and cybersquatter, Banks said: "It really bothers me."

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