There is indeed a big elephant in the room.

Paymium, SAS, which owns the domain name Blockchain.io, has asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Blockchain Luxembourg S.A. & Blockchain (US), Inc., which own the domain name Blockchain.com.

Blockchain Luxembourg S.A. (BL) filed a lawsuit (pdf) in September claiming that Paymium’s use of Blockchain.io infringed BL’s “Blockchain” trademark.

BL even suggested “Except for two letters, Paymium’s URL www.blockchain.io is identical to Blockchain’s URL www.blockchain.info.” Indeed, many top level domains are just a couple of letters off from each other, but that doesn’t give the owner of a second level domain in one extension the right to the same domain in another extension.

In its Motion to Dismiss, Paymium writes:

The deference standards of Twombly and Iqbal do not obscure the elephant in the room – this lawsuit is an improper grab at trademark exclusivity in the word BLOCKCHAIN, perhaps

the hottest technology buzzword on the planet. While Plaintiffs were prescient and resourceful enough to obtain the domain names blockchain.com and blockchain.info, they may not properly leverage that foresight into an anti-competitive and unearned monopoly in the term.

BL filed an amended complaint earlier this month.