This Wednesday a security blog reported that several rogue sites are in operation which aim to pull in people who were aiming to reach The Pirate Bay, but accidentally entered the URL with typos. While this kind of activity is nothing new, there is a more interesting detail being overlooked. One of the companies behind the scheme is trying to register the Pirate Bay trademark in the United States.

For as long as illicit file-sharing has been around there have been entrepreneurs targeting those out for a free lunch – or a free movie or song. Since many thousands of people new to the downloading game are aware that what they are doing could land them in a little hot water, these individuals are perfect targets for scammers.

Rogue file-sharing sites have been flourishing for years and keeping up with them all is an impossible task. What most of them have in common though is that generally users don’t get what they expected from their visit. In some cases they do get what they want but end up paying, often quite high prices too through shady small print or confusing terms and conditions.

These days more often than not they get what they were looking for but also get something unexpected on top – such as some nasty malware.

Since victims are visiting the file-sharing equivalent of a clip joint, in many cases they find themselves with no legal recourse, meaning these sites run and run.

There are probably a dozen methods of pulling people into these sites, but the main technique is to utilize established file-sharing brands and themes. There are hundreds of scammy sites with ‘MP3 download’ in the title and countless others which play on the LimeWire, BitTorrent and eDonkey/eMule brands.

Yesterday the Sunbelt Blog reported on a scam, actually several different scams, which in part target two very well known brands, eMule and The Pirate Bay. The method of drawing people in relies on them typing in The Pirate Bay’s domain name incorrectly. A small typo here or there takes the victim to a fake domain which results in them downloading a piece of malware. All pretty standard stuff for file-sharing scammers.

However, while researching the companies and individuals behind the dozen or so domains, one particular name stood out. Several of the domains are registered to a company called Pioneer Enterprises and many have their true owners obscured by a privacy service. But a few, and indeed others not listed by Sunbelt, are registered to one Craig Pratka of Yaphank, New York.

Pratka appears to be behind a company called BladeBook, LLC which is the registrant of dozens of other domains. Nothing particularly unusual about that except that BladeBook seem to be branching out into a new area – trademarks.

June 30th 2009 was a pretty exciting day. Sweden’s Global Gaming Factory shocked the world by announcing that it would buy The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million in the hope that it could turn the site into a cash cow.

This event didn’t go unnoticed by BladeBook, LLC. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Pratka filed a U.S. federal trademark registration for PirateBay (Serial 77770964) on that same day, later going on to file registration for PiratesBay for good measure.

While both of those applications have now expired with the statement “Abandoned” others are in the pipeline.

On Thursday May 6th 2010, BladeBook filed trademark registrations for Pirate Bay (Serial 85032017) and Pirates Bay (Serial 85032022). The description given by BladeBook for ‘their’ business is as follows;

Provision of telecommunications access and links to computer databases, computer networks and the Internet, namely, providing users online access via a website to third party websites featuring downloadable audio-visual media content in the nature of full-length, partial-length, and clips from motion pictures, television programming, sports events, videos, music videos, music, and interactive games. FIRST USE: 20020611. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20070111

Last year Sweden-based Englishman and alcohol entrepreneur Colin Scragg registered The Pirate Bay (Serial 77787908) so that he could put the site’s famous logo on bottles of rum. That registration is now listed as “opposition pending”.

At the time of publication, Craig Pratka has not responded to our requests for comment.