Los Angeles Marketing Firm Sued for Trademark Infringement
Los Angeles – Los Angeles based D and D Marketing, Inc., doing business as T3 Leads, is being sued for trademark infringement for allegedly violating a San Antonio company’s trademark by using its name on various websites designed to generate business leads for other companies.
The trademark infringement complaint was filed by San Antonio-based USAA (United Services Automotive Association), a financial services company that provides banking, investing, and insurance services to individuals and families that serve, or served in the United states military. In its complaint, filed in a state district court in Bexar County, Texas, USAA claims that the infringing websites were responsible for generating leads that included the names and private financial information of consumers who had visited the sites to possibly obtain automobile insurance or financial services.
The same day that it filed its complaint, USAA also obtained a temporary restraining order to bar T3 Leads from using its name as any part of a domain name. Next week, a judge will decide whether the restraining order should actually become a temporary injunction.
USAA is alleging that T3 Leads is infringing its trademark by including the USAA name in several lead-generating websites, such as usaautoinsurancequotes.com, autoinsurancequotesusaa.com, payday-loans-usaa.com, and others. The websites were still active this week, however links to apply for a loan or to obtain insurance quotes had been disabled.
Paul Berry, a media relations executive for USAA, said in an email statement that “USAA is committed to protecting its reputation and ensuring that its members know when they are doing business with USAA, and that their personal information remains confidential.”
Operating in the field of “Internet affiliate marketing,” in which a merchant rewards affiliates for directing consumers to the merchant’s website to make a purchase, T3 Leads describes itself on its own website as the “premier Internet destination for quality leads and marketing opportunities” for web merchants and affiliates. The company’s CEO, Dmitry Fomichev, also named in the lawsuit, could not be reached for comment.
Besides allegedly infringing on USAA’s trademark by including it in domain names, T3 is also being accused of advertising the payday-loans-usaa.com website via a Twitter campaign.
Both Fomichev and D and D Marketing have been accused a trademark infringement before. Last summer, the entity was issued a permanent injunction barring it from using QuickClick or quickclickloans.com trademarks, after a Georgia company that operates the quickclickloans.com website sued it for trademark infringement. The parties reportedly reached an undisclosed settlement.
