Court documents in the Microsoft/ No-IP civil case

There's some interesting stuff in the "Second Amended Order Granting Ex Parte Application for a TRO":

"4. There is good cause to believe that Defendant Vitalwerks has engaged in and is likely to engage in acts or practices that violate the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (15 U.S.C. § 1125) and the common law of negligence, and that Microsoft is, therefore, likely to prevail on the merits of this action."

According to Wikipedia:

"The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), 15 U.S.C. § 1125(d), is an American law enacted in 1999 and that established a cause of action for registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name confusingly similar to, or dilutive of, a trademark or personal name."[1]

The Order also states:

"All Malware Defendants: ... Using sub-domains containing Microsoft’s protected marks ..."

So this suggests that Vitalwerks (doing business as No-IP.com) may have been helping distribute the malware by registering innocent-looking domains for the victims to click on (something like "microsoft.com.malware.me").

I'd find it hard to believe that a legitimate company that registers domain names for its users wouldn't have a mechanism to filter out obviously fraudulent ones (especially since there's a law that prohibits the use of such domain names). There aren't really any legitimate reasons to have a domain beginning with "microsoft.com.", for example, unless you happen to be Microsoft.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Pr...