Clinton, NC — Directors Advantage, Inc., the owner and operator of Cremation.com, has filed a federal lawsuit seeking a court order disabling and transferring the cremations.com domain name in an effort to protect consumers from Internet confusion and deception associated with cremations.com.
Directors Advantage has served funeral home clients with technology and digital marketing services for many years including the provision of services such as development of memorial tribute videos, funeral home websites, online memorials, and digital marketing services. The Cremation.com trademark has been used for nearly fifteen years to promote and provide goods, services, and information to consumers in the field of funeral services and Directors Advantage has also more recently promoted and provided such goods and services through use of a federally registered version of the Cremation.com trademark.
The lawsuit alleges that the cremations.com domain name is owned by a fictitious entity at an address outside of the U.S., and persons acting on behalf of cremations.com have, among other actions:
- Misrepresented to potential customers that the sales solicitations were being made on behalf of Directors Advantage’s legitimate Cremation.com site as opposed to cremations.com;
- Fraudulently requested and accepted payments for advertisements on Directors Advantage’s legitimate Cremation.com site when in fact such persons have no affiliation with Directors Advantage or Cremation.com;
- Engaged in egregious sales tactics that included as swearing at potential customers after advising and/or implying that they were acting on behalf of on Directors Advantage’s legitimate Cremation.com site; and
- Misrepresented to potential customers that Directors Advantage’s legitimate Cremation.com site was going out of business or that they were in fact the owners of Cremation.com
Ellery Bowker, CEO of Directors Advantage, stated “We have a duty to protect our customers and our brand. After receiving numerous complaints, inquiries and even threats of legal action from customers who have been confused and deceived by cremations.com, we felt it was important to pursue legal action.
The case, Directors Advantage, Inc. v. cremations.com, 1:15-cv-00141-GBL-TRJ, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia by David E. Weslow, a partner in Wiley Rein LLP’s Intellectual Property Practice, and Attison L. Barnes, III, co-chair of Wiley Rein’s Litigation Practice.
