What is cy­ber­squat­ting?

The domain market is full of users occupying promising addresses. If these domain names are trade­marked terms, they might be breaking the law. This practice, often con­sid­ered illegal, is commonly referred to in internet terms as cy­ber­squat­ting.

Cy­ber­squat­ting meaning and types

While domain grabbers target un­pro­tect­ed terms, cy­ber­squat­ters con­cen­trate specif­i­cal­ly on trade­marks and proper names. The aim of reg­is­ter­ing legally-protected terms as part of the domain name is to sell them to the actual rights owner for a higher transfer fee.

Cy­ber­squat­ting is also referred to as brand jacking or name jacking, depending on the type of trademark pro­tec­tion. If the con­tro­ver­sial domain contains the name or part of the name of musicians, sports per­son­al­i­ties, TV stars, or other celebri­ties this results in an overlap of both practices.

To put pressure on rights holders, many of these domains are used for malicious purposes. For example, they include content which shows the business or the person concerned in a bad light.

A special type of cy­ber­squat­ting is ty­posquat­ting, where typos are pur­pose­ful­ly made in brand name domains in order to intercept visitors.

Domain name law in the US

The An­ti­cy­ber­squat­ting Consumer Pro­tec­tion Act (ACPA) was created in the US in order to solve domain name disputes. This is also known as “Truth in Domain Names Act” and is an extension of the Lanham Act, which governs US trademark law on a federal level. It came into effect in 1999 and was intended to protect consumers from being misled.

A typical use for ACPA is cy­ber­squat­ting. In order to appeal to the law, the plaintiff needs to be the trademark owner and show that the defendant is ma­li­cious­ly profiting from using their brand as a domain name. The domain and brand need to be identical or con­fus­ing­ly similar for the case to have any chance of success.

For disputes relating to in­ter­na­tion­al domains, ICANN (Internet Cor­po­ra­tion for Assigned Names and Numbers) has in­tro­duced a central ar­bi­tra­tion procedure, known as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Res­o­lu­tion Policy (UDRP). This offers an al­ter­na­tive to ne­go­ti­a­tions before a state court and enables com­plainants to obtain a transfer of the disputed domain in addition to deletion.

When does using a brand name actually become con­tro­ver­sial? Pre­vi­ous­ly, such ma­li­cious­ness was de­ter­mined by US ju­ris­dic­tion as being when a domain is reg­is­tered in order to abuse a brand’s traffic domain for their own purposes, or when a domain is bought so it can be sold to the trademark owner. In addition, providing false data during the reg­is­tra­tion process is con­sid­ered malicious. While the legal con­se­quences of ICANN’s UDRP procedure are limited to deletion or transfer of a domain, the ACPA also allows claims for damages of up to USD 100,000 to be obtained.

Social media and cy­ber­squat­ting

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter continue to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty and this has led to a new form of cy­ber­squat­ting where trademark-protected brands or names are reg­is­tered by others. They have now made the practice a violation of their terms and services. Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, found out the hard way just how damaging cy­ber­squat­ting can be. Someone reg­is­tered a Twitter account using his name and posted many deroga­to­ry status updates with the aim of damaging his rep­u­ta­tion. He was the first celebrity to file a lawsuit against the site, before later dropping it.

Facebook is also strict when it comes to trademark in­fringe­ment. Trademark owners must report any unlawful profiles as soon as they see them. A further step to prevent cy­ber­squat­ting is mobile phone au­then­ti­ca­tion, which involves a user verifying their account by phone in order to get a username.

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