Cybersquatting - The Next Generation
Press Release - London June 2001
With avenues for profit being closed to cybersquatters across the internet, many are turning to "typosquatting", or registering common misspellings of famous trade or domain names deliberately to generate income from web users with less than perfect typing skills.
Joe Cartoon, famous home of the "Frog Blender," and "Micro-Gerbil" viral marketing and internet cartoons yesterday won the right to stop a cybersquatter from registering domain names with common typo's of "Joe Cartoon".
JoeCartoon.com, which averages 700,000 visits per month claimed that John Zuccarini was typosquatting having registered joescartoon.com, joecarton.com, joescartons.com, joescartoons.com. Webusers who inadvertently accessed Zuccarini's sites became mouse-trapped there, meaning they were unable to exit without clicking on a succession of advertisements. Zuccarini received between ten and twenty-five cents from the advertisers for every click and admitted in court to earning up to US$1,000,000 from such enterprises.
JoeCartooon.com used the US Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act 1999 to stop Zuccarini from using these domain names. When threatened with action by JoeCartoon.com last year, Zuccarini changed the websites to free speech sites and claimed that he had registered the domain names to protest against JoeCartoon's sites which encouraged cruelty to animals and desensitised children to violence. The US Court disagreed and said that Zuccarini had deliberately registered misspellings of distinctive and famous names in bad faith with the intention of profiting from the registration.
This is not the first time John Zuccarini has faced proceedings for typosquatting; in last year alone, Dow Jones & Company used ICANN's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy ("UDRP") against him as did Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc and Yahoo. Microsoft have also taken UDRP proceedings against typosquatters for "microsotf" and "microsfot" domains.
The USA is the only country to go so far as to enact legislation banning cybersquatting. In England, cybersquatting has been outlawed by the courts since 1998 when One in a Million lost the right to use domain names such as marksandspencer.co.uk, sainsburys.co.uk and burgerking.co.uk which it had registered and subsequently tried to sell to those companies. The UK courts have not yet heard any typosquatting cases yet however. It may be that owners of correctly spelt domains now have other dispute resolution avenues open to them such as UDRP or that famous name owners are becoming more web-savvy and registering "typo" and "sucks" domains themselves!
SPRECHER GRIER HALBERSTAM LLP
Sprecher Grier Halberstam specialise in e-commerce and domain name disputes.
© This article is copyright Sprecher Grier Halberstam LLP.2008 and should not be construed as legal advice or opinion in any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general information purposes only. You are urged to contact a suitably qualified lawyer for specific advice.