AdMedia moves to dismiss Yahoo’s trademark forgery suit, argues registration would have lapsed

A forged signature, a motion to dismiss, and the question every seller and buyer of a premium domain eventually meets: when the name changes hands, what happens to the trademark rights sitting behind it? Yahoo's suit against AdMedia turns on that separation, and the answer is not as obvious as it looks.

Yahoo Ad Tech sued Ad.com Interactive Media, which does business as AdMedia, and its CEO Danny Bibi, alleging a scheme to take U.S. trademark registration #2914052 — a stylized Advertising.com logo — by filing a fabricated Trademark Assignment Agreement with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, complete with a forged e-signature of a Yahoo executive. Yahoo also alleges AdMedia went on to seek marks for advertising.com, advertising.net, advert.com and advertise.com. AdMedia has moved to dismiss.

The mechanism matters more than the outcome. Recording an assignment at the trademark office is an administrative act: the office records what is filed. It does not call the assignor to confirm the signature. That is what makes a recorded assignment persuasive to anyone who later checks the register — and it is why the chain of title, not just the registration, is worth reading in diligence.

AdMedia's motion does not appear to contest the forgery. Its argument is different: it bought the advertising.com domain from Yahoo, and the registration would have lapsed had it not recorded an assignment. It adds that Yahoo keeping trademark rights in advertising.com would breach the duty of good faith and fair dealing, since a reasonable person would understand a domain sale to mean the seller will not interfere with the buyer's use of the name.

That is a duty argument, not a title argument. It asks the court to treat the sale of the domain as carrying an implied obligation about the mark. It does not assert that the assignment document was genuine. Yahoo's reply makes the point directly: recasting a forgery as a favour does not cure it, and when the assignment was recorded on 13 December 2024, Yahoo held a live registration with more than six months left to renew.

Background helps here. U.S. trademark registrations run in ten-year terms, with maintenance filings along the way. A registration lapses because an owner lets it lapse, not because the calendar forces it. The claim that a mark would have died anyway is therefore a claim about the owner's intentions, which is a harder thing to prove than a missed deadline.

For anyone holding or buying a name, the lesson is structural. A domain sale and a trademark sale are two transactions. A purchase agreement that is silent on marks leaves the seller's register rights exactly where they were — and leaves the buyer exposed if it later uses the name in a way the mark owner dislikes. Buyers of descriptive or generic names, in particular, should seek an express assignment or a covenant not to sue, or at minimum a representation about which marks the seller holds on the string.

The brief also notes a pattern: in an earlier cybersquatting dispute, the same company submitted a suspect invoice and email as evidence. For counterparties, that argues for verifying documents at their source rather than trusting a register entry or a filing.

What remains open: whether the case survives the motion, which tests the pleadings rather than the facts; what happens to the additional applications; and whether the registration itself is cancelled or transferred. A motion to dismiss decides none of that. It decides whether the allegations are enough to proceed.