BofA Squashes Cybersquatter, For Now

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York court has awarded Bank of America the use of the domain names bofaml.com and mlbofa.com, after a "domainer" bought those two names on September 14, 2008, the day Bank of America and Merrill Lynch merged, hoping the bank would pay seven figures to buy it back later. District Judge Denny Chin found that J. Taikwok Yung, through his business Webadviso, had registered the names in bad faith, hoping to sell them back to the bank and cash in on publicity from the merger.

Yung is a former U.S. Marine who claims in an appeal he has already filed with the court that he "hope to educate and interest other recent retired returning Marines living across the U.S. about the opportunities available on the INTERNET" [sic]. He says that his purpose is to acquire high-value domain names and park them with domain parking service providers to generate pay-per-click revenue. He registered the BofA domain names with GoDaddy.com. In his claim, Yung refers to BofA as a "small to mid cap" company that is "known worldwide for its massive failure in investments in numerous financial instruments."