Athene Annuity and Life Company v. Athene Group Limited

District Court, D. Arizona·Decided August 22, 2025·No. 2:24-cv-01120·Unknown

Opinion

Athene Annuity and Life Company, et al., No. CV-24-01120-PHX-JZB

Plaintiffs, ORDER

v.

Athene Group Limited, et al.,

Defendants. This matter was assigned to Magistrate Judge John Z. Boyle. (Doc. 2). On July 18, 2025, the Magistrate Judge filed a Report and Recommendation with this Court.1 (Doc. 35). The Magistrate Judge has recommended that Plaintiffs’ Motion for Default Judgment, (Doc. 32), be granted in-part. To date, no objections have been filed. 1 This case is assigned to a Magistrate Judge. However, not all parties have consented to the jurisdiction of the Magistrate Judge. Thus, the matter is before this Court pursuant to General Order 21-25, which states in relevant part: When a United States Magistrate Judge to whom a civil action has been assigned pursuant to Local Rule 3.7(a)(1) considers dismissal to be appropriate but lacks the jurisdiction to do so under 28 U.S.C. § 636(c)(1) due to incomplete status of election by the parties to consent or not consent to the full authority of the Magistrate Judge, IT IS ORDERED that the Magistrate Judge will prepare a Report and Recommendation for the Chief United States District Judge or designee.

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED designating the following District Court Judges to review and, if deemed suitable, to sign the order of dismissal on my behalf:

Phoenix/Prescott: Senior United States District Judge Stephen M. McNamee The Court “may accept, reject, or modify, in whole or in part, the findings or recommendations made by the magistrate.” 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C); see Baxter v. Sullivan, 923 F.2d 1391, 1394 (9th Cir. 1991). Parties generally have fourteen days from the service of a copy of the Magistrate’s recommendation within which to file specific written objections to the Court. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1); Fed. R. Civ. P. 6, 72. Failure to object to a Magistrate Judge’s recommendation relieves the Court of conducting de novo review of the Magistrate Judge’s factual findings and waives all objections to those findings on appeal. See Turner v. Duncan, 158 F.3d 449, 455 (9th Cir. 1998). A failure to object to a Magistrate Judge’s conclusion “is a factor to be weighed in considering the propriety of finding waiver of an issue on appeal.” Id. Having reviewed the Report and Recommendation of the Magistrate Judge, (Doc. 35), and no Objections having been made by any party thereto, the Court hereby incorporates and adopts the Magistrate Judge’s Report and Recommendation as to Plaintiffs’ claims for trademark infringement and unfair competition. However, the Court declines to adopt the Report and Recommendation’s findings as to Plaintiffs’ cybersquatting claim with the exception of one domain name—Athene.Network— because the Court finds that the remaining 159 URLs identified by Plaintiffs and named in this action as Doe Defendants are not actionable “domain names” within the meaning of the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (“ACPA”). The Magistrate Judge found that Plaintiffs stated a claim for cybersquatting under the ACPA against all Doe Defendants operating under a URL containing Plaintiffs’ “Athene” mark—95 Doe Defendants in all—and has recommended that the Court award Plaintiffs $2,030,000 in statutory damages against Defendant Athene Group Ltd. and Doe Defendants 1–160, consisting of $100,000 for each of Defendant Athene Group Ltd.’s “12 primary domains” and $10,000 for the remaining “83 sites and social media accounts containing the Athene mark or something confusingly similar.” (Doc. 35 at 16). In reaching this damages calculation, the Magistrate Judge trimmed the $2,680,000 in statutory damages that Plaintiffs requested on the basis that 65 of the 148 URLs identified by Plaintiffs did not contain the Athene mark or something confusingly similar. Having not had the benefit of full briefing on the Motion due to Defendants’ default, the Magistrate Judge did not thoroughly evaluate whether the 160 URLs identified by Plaintiffs in the First Amended Complaint (“FAC”) qualify as “domain names” within the meaning of the ACPA. Upon a review of Plaintiffs’ FAC and Motion for Default Judgment, the Court concludes that only one of the 160 identified URLs is a domain name and thus actionable under the ACPA. To understand why, it is helpful to begin with the definition of “domain name” given in the ACPA: “The term ‘domain name’ means any alphanumeric designation which is registered with or assigned by any domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority as part of an electronic address on the Internet.” 15 U.S.C. § 1127; see also Jones v. Hollywood Unlocked, Inc., 2:21-cv- 07929-MEMF(PVCx), 2022 WL 18674459, at *25 (C.D. Cal. Nov. 22, 2022) (“To qualify as a domain name, the domain name must be registered with a registry operator.”). Importantly, domain names are not necessarily equivalent to URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), also known as web addresses. As one district court that has considered the issue has explained: Each web page within a website has its own URL, for example “a2zsolutions.com/desks/floor/laptraveler/dkfl-lt.htm.” Interactive Prod. Corp. v. a2z Mobile Office Sols., Inc., 326 F.3d 687, 691 (6th Cir. 2003). A URL consists of a domain name (a2zsolutions.com) and a “post-domain path” (/desks/floor/laptraveler/dkfl-lt.htm). Id. As one court put it, the post- domain path is “the text that comes after the slash.” Patmont Motor Werks, Inc. v. Gateway Marine, Inc., No. 3:96-cv-02703-TEH, 1997 WL 811770, at *4 n.6 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 18, 1997) (“goped” in “www.idiosync.com/goped”). United Fed’n of Churches, LLC v. Johnson, 522 F.Supp.3d 842, 851 (W.D. Wash. 2021), aff’d in part, vacated in part on other grounds, No. 23-35060, 2023 WL 8271978 (9th Cir. Nov. 30, 2023); see also Office Depot Inc. v. Zuccarini, 596 F.3d 696, 698–99 (9th Cir. 2010) (discussing the structure of the domain name system). As is relevant here, some social media sites allow the user to create a personalized URL, known as a “vanity URL,” where such vanity URL is contained in or comprises the post-domain path. See Johnson, 522 F. Supp. 3d at 851 (“some social media websites, such as Facebook, permit a user to create a unique, personalized URL known as a “vanity URL.”). Take, for instance, one of the URLs named as a Doe Defendant in this action: https://facebook.com/Athene.Network/. Within this URL, “Athene.Network” is the vanity URL, or post-domain path. The domain name, distinct from the post-domain path, remains facebook.com. See also Jones, 2022 WL 18674459, at *25 (“The handle specific portion of a Twitter website does not designate a domain name in and of itself. Instead, it qualifies as a “post-domain path” and thus [is] distinct from the domain name itself.”). Of the 160 Doe Defendants named in this action, Plaintiffs have identified only one domain name that can support an ACPA cause of action for cybersquatting: Athene.Network, as registered with Namecheap, Inc. The other URLs, as will be explained, do not include Plaintiffs’ mark Athene in the domain name; rather, they include “Athene” as either a post-domain path, a subdomain, or, as in the do

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Athene Annuity and Life Company v. Athene Group Limited, (D. Ariz. 2025).

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