Apotheis MyWebstars ripoff Extortion and Trademark Infringement Midland Texas

Apotheis MyWebstars has been using my federally registered trademark to profit their business, when they were notified and asked to remove the infringing trademark. They replied............

We will not address the numerous misstatements made in the email sent earlier today. We prefer a peaceful resolution of these issues. Below is our proposal.

1. All references to mywebstars will be removed from our site and our marketing materials in the next 30 days.

2. We will sell you the three mywebstars domains (com, net and org) for $1500. Transfers of the domains will be made within 3 business days of receipt of payment.

If the above is acceptable you may make payment with an Open Payment of $1500 at the URL below and our staff will take care of the domain transfers.

http://www.apotheis.com/recharge-account.htm

This offer expires in 3 business days.

This offer is not negotiable.

The Partners

The problem here is several one anyone who has done business with this company can see they hide behind a web address, they refuse to display a physical address which every LEGAL business in the US has to have (it is called a business license) so why would you not post the actual contact information on the site. If the business is accepting credit card payments all credit card processors require the business display contact information on every page.

Now I tried to handle this quietly and informed them that "hey your site uses our trademark MYWEBSTAR and if you were not aware of it remove it from your site and marketing materials" they reply by trying to extort $1500 for a domain registered at GoDaddy.com for $8.95 each, last time I checked that was alot of profit for a name they have no legal right too! I even agreed to pay this company the registation fee for the domains, $1500 isn't a fair price since our company is the one who has built the MYWEBSTAR brand into a reliable trusted provider of Internet Services.

I found I have a couple avenues to take here, one is the infamous ICANN Domain Name Dispute Resolution policy. These folks got a gold mine here they want you to pay $1200 to $6000 to have a panel decide if the trademark you already spent alot of money on to get applies to the domain name. (Not rocket science if trademark is for MYWEBSTAR then any business calling itself MYWEBSTARS is in violation due to the confusion in the marketplace especially when this company only came up with this name after we open our doors online and had a top 10 spot on dozens of engines) Apotheis operated as just mywebstars for a long time, they only made the change to Apotheis mywebstars after the Trademark issues began. So in a nutshell I need to pay $3000 to get a 3 domains transfered to me and no reimbursement for the costs involved

The 2nd avenue we have here is the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act signed into law by President Clinton in 1999. This law which generally prohibits using a domain name containing another's trademark with an intent to profit. The law allows penalties of up to $100,000 per domain name abuse incident; anyone who in bad faith uses, sells, or tries to sell a domain name that infringes another's trademark may be fined. I believe this is the best recourse since we can receive a injunction against the company and ask for all profits earned by the use of the trademark, plus attorney fees and court costs and punitive damages.

Apotheis also used our trademark on eBay to offer services under our trademark. Luckily one VeRO Report stopped the damage on the eBay site.

I actually believed this company had simply made a mistake in using the name until I asked them to stop and they demand I pay them $1500 for the 3 domains. I see on ripoffreport where Apotheis mywebstars has extorted money from it's clients. I hope no one else is ripped off by this so called company.......... but wait it get's better. Apotheis mywebstars is NOW FOR SALE according to the apotheis site. I hope potential buyers of this company investigate it to see what other pending legal avenues are coming. They won't tell you the price though, not unless you pay them yep $1000 just to get a price for the business. Not very ethical in my opinion, especially since after you pay this $1000 and they say ok the price is x amount which may be more than it is worth. YOU DONT GET A REFUND. Never heard that one before!!! Watch out for these guys they are coming to a ripoff area near you soon.

Scott
Pocahontas, Tennessee
U.S.A.