In an August 26, 2013 ruling, Judge Deborah A. Batts granted in part defendants' motion to dismiss Courtalert.com, Inc.'s complaint asserting. Courtalert.com and defendant e-law.com both supply alerts about court filing to lawyers and others users. Courtalert.com alleged that e-law.com registered five domain names incorporating Courtalert.com's trademarks in full. e-law.com cancelled the domain names following Courtalert.com's objection, but Courtalert.com sued anyway, asserting five Lanham Act claims (trademark infringement, unfair competition, false designation of origin, cybersquatting and dilution), and a state unjust enrichment claim.The Court dismissed the trademark infringement claim, holding that Courtalert.com had failed to allege use of the infringing marks in commerce. Judge Batts noted that there are circumstances under which a defendant's use of a mark can satisfy the "use in commerce" standard if it has an impact on the plaintiff's commercial activities, but found that Courtalert.com's complaint did not claim such use. In particular, Judge Batts wrote:
The Complaint does not claim, for instance, that when typed into the address bar, any of the five domain names at issue directs visitors to Defendants' commercial website. Nor does Plaintiff allege that the domains names, when typed in, lead users to information opposing Plaintiff's products or service. In fact, Plaintiff does not allege that any message at all results when the domain names are typed in. As such, a critical component of the "classically competitive" behavior is missing here, and Defendants' behavior seems to amount to nothing more than mere registration of a domain name.
