AdMedia moves to dismiss Yahoo’s trademark forgery suit, argues registration would have lapsed – Domain Name Wire | Domain Name News

The company does not appear to dispute the allegation that it used a forged signature to transfer the trademark.

Ad.com Interactive Media (dba AdMedia) has asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit Yahoo Ad Tech filed against it that alleges that AdMedia forged a signature to take a trademark.

In the suit, Yahoo alleges that AdMedia and CEO Danny Bibi orchestrated a scheme to fraudulently acquire U.S. trademark registration #2914052. The mark is a stylized logo for Advertising.com.

It alleges that AdMedia created a fake “Trademark Assignment Agreement” between AdMedia and Yahoo IP Holdings that included a forged e-signature of a Yahoo executive. It then filed the assignment agreement (pdf) with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to obtain the trademark.

Yahoo said that AdMedia then attempted to procure additional trademarks for advertising.com, advertising.net, advert.com, and advertise.com.

In a motion to dismiss (pdf), AdMedia states that it purchased the advertising.com domain from Yahoo, and it argues the trademark would have lapsed had it not recorded an assignment. It also argued that Yahoo retaining trademark rights to advertising.com “would be a breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing as a reasonable person would understand that in selling AdMedia the ADVERTISING.COM domain name, Yahoo would not interfere with AdMedia’s use of the domain name to market and sell its services, including through attempting to retain trademark rights in ADVERTISING.COM.”

While the motion to dismiss is heavily redacted, it doesn’t seem to dispute that AdMedia forged a signature to transfer the trademark. AdMedia might not need to argue that at this point, but it also seems like something it would include.

Yahoo responded (pdf) to the motion by stating that AdMedia did not dispute the forgery. It stated:

Defendants attempt to recast their forgery as a favor. They speculate that Yahoo would have let the registration lapse anyway, so AdMedia’s theft “kept the ‘052 Registration alive” and cost Yahoo nothing. Mot. at 1–3, 10–12. A retroactive excuse for a fraudulent act neither justifies the conduct nor eliminates liability for it. And the argument ignores the facts: when AdMedia recorded the fraudulent assignment on December 13, 2024, Yahoo held a live registration and had more than six months to renew it.

This isn’t the first time a company has claimed that AdMedia forged a document. In a prior cybersquatting dispute, the company submitted a suspect invoice and email as evidence.