By Brian Bowling

Published: Friday, November 16, 2012, 10:56 a.m.
Updated: Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Cranberry Motors LLC claims in a federal lawsuit that Diehl Automotive Group Inc. and its president, Corina Diehl, have bought three URLs similar to its www.cranberrychryslerjeepdodge.com address and are using them to redirect Internet searchers to Diehl's website.

The Cranberry dealership claims in its lawsuit filed Thursday that Diehl and her Butler-based company are violating the Anticybersquating Consumer Protection Act. Similar to the federal trademark law, a provision of the act seeks to stop companies from deliberately confusing consumers by registering web addresses that are similar to their competitors.

Dennis Blackwell, the lawyer for Diehl Automotive, said there's no merit to the lawsuit because Cranberry Motors can't own either the township's or the car company's name. Consequently, www.cranberrychrysler.com and the other addresses were available to the first person who bought them.

“We absolutely did not cybersquat,” he said.

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