Love CBD is to file a legal claim against category peer Love Hemp, after claiming the brand is hijacking its customers by redirecting the domain name lovecbd.com to its own website.
The brand, which makes a range of CBD products including capsules, balms and teas, said it had sought to acquire the domain name lovecbd.com only to discover it had been acquired by someone else last year.
Subsequently, the brand “noticed a few months ago” the domain redirected to Love Hemp’s website.
This, said Love CBD founder Phil Culbertson, was “clearly an act of bad faith to both mislead customers and to so brazenly attempt to steal ours”.
Culbertson said he had contacted Love Hemp and offered to pay the brand for the domain, but was told it did not own it.
This, he said, had led him “to believe that the current owner [of Love Hemp] must have bought it in his own name”.
“It seems highly unlikely anyone else would be motivated to undertake such an action,” he added.
Culbertson said Love CBD – which was founded in 2014 and a year prior to Love Hemp – had not seen a “massively detrimental” impact on sales yet because of the redirect, but added “over time, it could increase”.
“There’s also a kind of ethical thing here,” he added. “It’s really underhanded and our main argument is that this has been done in bad faith.”
Culbertson said Love CBD was in the process of engaging lawyers with the hope of taking the case to a tribunal, where he said he was “confident in our legal position”.
“In about 95% of [these] cases, the claimant is successful and is awarded their domain,” he added.
Love Hemp did not respond to requests for comment.
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