Slipknot Withdraws Lawsuit Against Owner of slipknot.com

Photo Credit: Deezer

Slipknot withdraws their lawsuit against the owners of slipknot.com after alleging trademark infringement. But the website now appears to be offline.

On Thursday, Slipknot voluntarily dismissed their patent infringement lawsuit against the owners of the slipknot.com web domain. The band filed the suit three months ago under the federal Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. But now, it appears the website has gone dark.

In October, Slipknot filed a lawsuit alleging that the defendants had been “cybersquatting” on the website for around 24 years. The band accused the owners of the domain of unfair competition, as well as trademark infringement. According to the filing, the site displayed pay-per-click ads that directed visitors to unofficial merchandise store pages.

“The domain name was registered in an effort to profit off of [Slipknot’s] goodwill and to trick unsuspecting visitors—under the impression they are visiting a website owned, operated, or affiliated with [Slipknot]—into clicking on web searches and other sponsored links,” said the band’s attorney Craig Reilly.

“A fan of [Slipknot] or someone who otherwise wanted to purchase authorized Slipknot merchandise would undoubtedly visit the slipknot.com website, assuming it belonged to plaintiff, and then purchase the Slipknot merchandise linked to on the site, causing damages to plaintiff,” he added.

Despite the offending website now appearing to be offline, the band’s official website is still slipknot1.com.

In other Slipknot news, the band is “cooking” up some new music—but it’s hard to say when that might surface. Fortunately, fans can check out the 25th anniversary reissue of their self-titled album in the meantime, which features remixes and demo versions of some of Slipknot’s earliest songs.

“What I can tell you right now is that we are cooking,” said drummer Eloy Casagrande. “We are doing some new music, for sure. Yes, we are.”

That development follows the announcement in November that HarbourView Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in Slipknot’s publishing and recording rights, though the specifics of that deal remain publicly undisclosed.