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Riot wins LeagueofLegends.co dispute, web address redirected users to porn site

In June, Riot Games won a case against a scam website claiming to offer online support for its smash hit PC game League of Legends. Now, the company has won another dispute that it had filed in early August against the owner of LeagueofLegends.co (missing the ‘m’) which redirected users to a porn site.

Although the case (Case Number: DCO2012-0024) remains active on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website where it was originally filed, the Whois records for LeagueofLegends.co reflect Riot as the owner of the name. In addition to the change of ownership, the URL resolves to a blank web page, instead of a porn site filled with photos of nude women.

Considering LeagueofLegends.com ranks among the top 1,500 websites in the world, according to Alexa, it’s likely a lot of users entering a typo by forgetting the ‘m’ in .com, found themselves on a porn site, after typing the Colombia dot-co domain.

Right now if you type leagueoflegends.co into Google search, you can still see the hit for the porn site as shown in the screen shot below.

Since details of the ruling haven’t been posted online yet, it’s unknown whether the previous owner Martin Hornak handed over the name before a decision was even issued or if he was ordered to transfer the name.

One thing’s for sure, Riot must be relieved to have control.

However, the company isn’t finished going after owners of domain names with its popular hit video game ‘League of Legends’ in the name.

In late July, the company also filed a complaint over the domain name LeagueofLegendsPorn.com (Case Number: D2012-1516), which has yet to be decided. Unlike the dotco domain that pointed visitors to a graphic porn site, LeagueofLegendsPorn.com has a harmless “Coming Soon” page online. But given that Riot has trademarked the term “League of Legends”, it too will likely end up in Riot’s hands.

UPDATE: The case is now showing up as ‘terminated’, meaning the parties agreed on a settlement before the panel reached a decision.

Talking about this story: Kotaku, Joystiq, The Verge, Techdirt, GameStar, GamePolitics, MeriStation, GameDynamo, VG247, OnlineWelten.com, The Escapist, Kotaku Australia and Polygamia.pl

(Image of Riot Games Dublin Office via riotgames.com)

Riot wins battle over League of Legends scam site, domain ordered transferred

Riot Games has won a case (Case Number: D2012-0744) against a scam website claiming to offer online support for the real-time strategy game League of Legends (LoL). For those not aware, Riot Games provides official player support at the web address support.leagueoflegends.com, not support-leagueoflegends.com (notice the hyphen in the web address).

In a decision handed down on May 31, 2012, by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the domain name has been ordered transferred from the respondent Maik Baumgartner to Riot Games, Inc. Baumgartner first registered the name in early March according to Whois records.

This appears to be the first domain dispute brought by Riot Games and its no surprise the company won.

If you visit the scam site at support-leagueoflegends.com (screenshot below), it’ll try to get you to download a file.

Riot Games announced over the weekend that League of Legends was hacked. While this case appears to be unrelated, as its free-to-play game continues to grow in popularity, it will likely find itself victim to attacks online, as well as scam websites and cybersquatting of its well-known “League of Legends” trademark.

At the time of this posting, the domain has yet to be transferred, but it should only be a matter of days before the name is secured by Riot.

UPDATE: Details of the ruling have been published online.

Riot Games demonstrated that all of the elements enumerated in paragraph 4(a) of the Policy have been satisfied:

(i) the disputed domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the Complainant has rights;

(ii) the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the disputed domain name; and

(iii) the disputed domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

On the point of bad faith, the panelist had this to say:

In the present case, the Complainant has made a convincing case that the Respondent registered the disputed domain name with the deliberate intention of targeting the Complainant’s trademark for the purpose of acquiring various data from the Complainant’s customers by effectively impersonating the Complainant. In particular, the Complainant has demonstrated that the appearance of the Respondent’s website is highly likely to be confused with the support website of the Complainant. The Complainant has also demonstrated that the Respondent has intentionally selected a confusingly similar domain name to the Complainant’s trademark, being likewise a close typographical variant of the uniform resource locator of the Complainant’s support website, which in the Panel’s opinion is likely to heighten the possibility of consumer confusion. In addition, the Complainant has presented uncontested evidence that after registration of the disputed domain name the Respondent subsequently changed the function of the associated website in order to persuade Internet users who visit the said website unknowingly to download “malware”.

UPDATE 1: The website has been suspended according to a message on the home page.

Talking about this story: VG247 and Lazygamer

(Image of Riot Games office lobby via Riot.com)