Samantha Demetriou ⬥ 15 June
According to Business Insider, a Hamptons real estate firm has been employing what it calls a “very aggressive web strategy” to drum up new business. Unfortunately for the firm, Saunders Real Estate, most people would call that strategy “cybersquatting.”
Saunders had registered the names of the top brokers at other Hamptons firms as domain names and redirected those names to its own site, SaundersRE.com. Last month, Saunders transferred the domain SusanBreitenbach.com to rival firm Corcoran, where Ms. Breitenbach works. Now, a third firm, Prudential Douglas Elliman (the biggest firm in the Hamptons) has filed a lawsuit against Saunders over MichaelaKeszler.com and LoriBarbaria.com, the names of two of Elliman’s best brokers.
Andrew Saunders, the founder of Saunders Real Estate, has admitted that these actions were “improper” and offered to hand over the domain names for free. But in the lawsuit, Elliman alleges that Saunders is still holding on to a list of other squatted domains, and has asked for an unspecified amount of damages.
Tags: Andrew Saunders, Business Insider, Corcoran, cybersquatting, domain names, enforcement, Hamptons, lawsuit, Prudential Douglas Elliman, real estate, Saunders Real Estate, Web strategy