What is Cybersquatting and is it Legal?

When the internet was young, many businesses were slow to recognize the power of being online. As such, many were slow to register domain name websites. That opened the door to a cottage industry known as cybersquatting (sometimes called domain squatting). And while we are far from that time, cybersquatting can and still does happen.

Understanding Cybersquatting

Cybersquatting is the act of registering someone else’s trade name, slogan, or company name as your own, usually in an attempt to drive online traffic to your website. So, hypothetically, if you could go back in time and register Target.com for yourself, everybody looking for the retailer Target would put in target.com and be driven to your website.

Another tactic of cybersquatters is to register a company’s name in the hopes of selling it back to the company for big money. If you hypothetically did register target.com before Target actually could, you would try to sell it to Target.

Of course, today, almost every large retailer or company has their own name registered as their online URL, but that doesn’t stop cybersquatters. Today, if Target owns target.com, a cybersquatter might register targetstore.com, or tarrget.com (note the misspelling). Sometimes, a domain squatter will just add an “s” to the end—for example, registering “targets.com.”

Some cybersquatters will take advantage of typing errors that users make. So, for example, a cybersquatter might register “targer.com,” “targew.com,” “targt.com,” and hundreds of other misspellings and typos that they anticipate people making, all to drive traffic to their own site.

Is it Legal?

The law has evolved, making purposeful cybersquatting illegal, as a violation of trademark law. Using someone else’s name, or brand recognition, to drive traffic to your site is classic trademark infringement.

Most cybersquatting today comes from people registering upstart or new companies—or perhaps, even registering websites similar to competitors, in order to make them look bad, or to ruin their reputation.

Innocent Domain Registration

But in many cases, domain squatting is done innocently, perhaps just because two companies happen to have the same name or they are in the same industry. So, for example, imagine you had an archery class, and you registered mytarget.com. Target would likely have a hard time suing you because your businesses are wholly unrelated, and because you registered your URL, innocently and without malicious intent.

Take, for example, a man named Mike Rowe, who registered his name, mikerowesoft.com. Needless to say, tech giant Microsoft didn’t like this much and sued, resulting in a settlement.

What Can You Do?

All of this has meant that businesses need to register multiple variations of their URLs, at significant cost. They also need to routinely check on who might be misusing their trademarks in their URLs, so that they can take court action to shut down these cybersquatters—especially if they are ruining your business’ reputation or good name in the community.

Your intellectual property needs to be protected, even online. The West Palm Beach commercial litigation attorneys at Pike & Lustig are here to help you with your business or intellectual property law case.

Source:

fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/cybersquatting