Dennis Toeppen
| Dennis Eric Toeppen | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1964 (age 52–53) Mount Prospect, Illinois |
| Residence | Champaign, Illinois |
| Nationality | United States |
| Education | BS, MS, MBA |
| Alma mater |
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Northwestern University University of Chicago |
| Occupation | Bus company owner |
| Years active | 1983–present |
| Employer | Self-employed |
| Organization | Suburban Express |
| Home town | Mount Prospect, Illinois |
| Website | toeppen |
Dennis Toeppen is an American entrepreneur and the owner of bus company Suburban Express. He is also known for being a party to two cases of first impression relating to Domain Name registration.
Dennis Eric Toeppen grew up in Mount Prospect, Illinois. He graduated from Prospect High School in 1982 and enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, majoring in electrical engineering. He later changed his major to business, and graduated in 1987. Thereafter, he obtained a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, a master's degree in transportation from Northwestern University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
In 1983, Toeppen started Suburban Express, a bus company which provides transportation from Urbana-Champaign and several other towns containing universities to Chicago. After waging an initial price war with rival Greyhound Lines, fares in competitive markets had been reduced, and Suburban Express' ticket sales in Urbana-Champaign equaled those of Greyhound by 1985.
In 2013, Suburban Express received negative media coverage and a large amount of criticism from the Internet after filing 125 lawsuits against passengers and threatening others including a Reddit moderator. Afterwards, the company withdrew its lawsuits, then reinstated many.
Toeppen also started Allerton Charter Coach, Inc., a charter bus company with three buses and four vans as of 2014.
In 1995, Toeppen registered about 200 internet domain names including some which were similar to well known companies and popular trademarks. Some of them included panavision.com (Panavision), deltaairlines.com (Delta Air Lines), neiman-marcus.com (Neiman Marcus), eddiebauer.com (Eddie Bauer) and yankeestadium.com (New York Yankees). Some of these companies, like Delta Air Lines, paid Toeppen to acquire the domain names from him.
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