McAfee Plaintiff Seeks Change of Venue for His Cybersquatting Claims

Pro se plaintiff James Linlor filed two motions Wednesday (docket 5:23-cv-00385) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Jose to add cybersecurity company Musarubra as a second defendant in his cybersquatting complaint against McAfee and to transfer the case to the District of Delaware to “accommodate” the addition because Musarubra is incorporated there. Linlor seeks a May 9 hearing on the motions.

Linlor alleges McAfee is cybersquatting on his cyberguard.com internet domain name and preventing him from pursuing a similarly named cybersecurity consultancy (see 2303300002). McAfee maintains it isn’t the proper defendant for Linlor’s claims because it sold the domain to Musarubra in July 2021 as part of its strategy to divest all its enterprise businesses and concentrate on cybersecurity protection for consumers. Linlor’s motions Wednesday said he plans to make Musarubra the primary defendant but keep McAfee’s name on the lawsuit because he plans to add a claim asserting its transfer of cyberguard.com to Musarubra was “fraudulent.”

Linlor, a Nevada resident, could have filed his case in any venue but picked the Northern District of California, and “specifically the San Jose division,” because that was the venue where McAfee was listed as the owner of cyberguard.com with a California address, said his motion to transfer. If Delaware-incorporated Musarubra had been listed as the owner of cyberguard.com before the filing of the case, he would have filed it in the Delaware district court, it said.

McAfee “vehemently and repeatedly whines” that it’s not the registered owner of cyberguard.com, said the motion to transfer. McAfee said it would have no objection to a change of venue, while also “ignoring evidence” proving it’s still the rightful cyberguard.com owner, the motion said.

McAfee “must be retained as a secondary defendant” because an “apparent fraudulent transfer” of the domain name from McAfee to Musarubra occurred, said the motion to transfer. But Linlor agrees that at this time, “the primary defendant" should be changed to Musarubra, and the venue for this case should be “accordingly changed” to Musarubra's state of incorporation, it said.

McAfee's attorneys “are spread out between California and Texas and Delaware,” said the motion to transfer. “Their voluminous filings in this case (including the apparently fraudulent transfer of the domain) prove a ‘spare no expense’ attempt to delay and overwhelm” pro se plaintiff Linlor, the motion said. Linlor “seeks to simplify and ensure the core issues at-bar can be heard while not having multi-year delays if the venue is changed more than this one time,” it said.

Musarubra couldn’t have been added to Linlor’s complaint because it wasn’t listed as an owner of the “contested domain” cyberguard.com until a week after service was “perfected” on McAfee, said the motion to add a defendant. Internet registry records affirm Musarubra as the internet domain owner-of-record for cyberguard.com, but McAfee and Musarubra share the same office address in San Jose, it said.