On Wednesday a case was filed in the Middle District of Florida by Access Healthcare Physicians, LLC against IT Possible, LLC and Kirit Desai. The case alleges domain hijacking and cybersquatting on a domain without right of possession.
Access Healthcare, filings say, is a medical group that provides medical services to patients in Florida and maintains 14 different websites and domains to support the 88 offices that are a part of the group. The individual defendant, Desai, allegedly approached Access regarding opening a new medical office named Comprehensive Hematology Oncology LLC under the Access umbrella. As a part of this business venture, Access obtained 12 domain names under the Access GoDaddy domain registrar account. These domain names remained in Access’ control and the defendant were never granted login credentials or permission to use the GoDaddy account. The parties then fell into dispute and the venture was dissolved. IT Possible was then hired by defendant Desai as technology vendor for the new office.
The plaintiffs then allege that the defendants committed “cyber theft” of the domain names that had been previously purchased by Access and were still registered as Access’ property under the Access GoDaddy account.
Access accuses the defendants of making misrepresentations to the registrars into modifying the primary email address associated with the domains. The defendants then locked Access out of the domains by modifying the login credentials, which has blocked Access from accessing not only the domains that were associated with the possible joint venture, but also the 14 other websites that are a part of the account.
The plaintiffs are suing for violation of the federal and Florida Computer Fraud and Abuse acts and conversion and are asking for injunctive and monetary relief. The plaintiffs are represented by Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough.