Bank of Blue Valley sues North American for Web site

[Banned: daum]

The Bank of Blue Valley has filed a trademark infringement suit against North American Savings Bank over its new online mortgage Web site.


The complaint, filed Tuesday in federal court in Kansas City, Kan., claims that a former Blue Valley vice president, Richard Aguilar, registered the name mortgagebyinternet.com in June while still working for the Overland Park-based bank.

North American Savings, based in Grandview, hired Aguilar in July and started its Web site (mortgagebyinternet.com) earlier this month.

Blue Valley started its Web site (internetmortgage.com) two years ago.

The suit, which names North American Savings and Aguilar as defendants, charges the bank with trademark infringement, unfair competition and "cybersquatting." It also charges Aguilar with violating his fiduciary duty, claiming Blue Valley technically owns the mortgagebyinternet.com name because Aguilar was a bank employee when he registered it.

Blue Valley's attorney, Stewart Stein of Stinson Morrison Hecker LLP, said his client is concerned that customers could become confused by the similarity of the Web sites' names. He noted that about half of the bank's Web site customers find the site through Internet search engines or online mortgage "consolidator" firms such as LendingTree.com.

In addition, the suit claims that some of the mortgagebyinternet.com Web pages include "internetmortgage.com" embedded in the metatags, or the computer code used by search engines to identify Web sites. In essence, someone searching for Blue Valley's site could be led to North American Savings' site and think there was a connection, Stein said.

On the human side, about 20 Blue Valley employees have jumped ship to North American Savings in the past couple months, Stein said.

"If (the former employees) have contact with past customers, the similarity of name will be enhanced," Stein said.

Aguilar referred questions Wednesday to North American Savings officers, who said they still were reviewing the suit and couldn't comment.

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what a dummy