Typosquatting - The New Intellectual Property Protection Frontier
Posted 11-15-2008 at 09:23 AM by tundeakins
Imagine, you own a business and have had a trademarked name registered and protected by law for years. Historically, everyone in the world has known and recognized your trademark and you have yet to have to challenge anyone regarding the use, misuse, or abuse of your revered name.
You've assume all these years that you should have no worry or concern regarding expenditure for enforcement of your trademark. Years, that is, before the Internet and search engines became not only commonplace, but the means by which most of your modern day customers find your goods or services. You have gone through all the necessary steps to obtain a domain name for your organization and to include as many other derivatives of your trademark or service as you can imagine.
This is so that present and potential customers will have as little problem as possible finding and remembering your sites. Search engines provide a vital service for business domain names due to the fact they can drive new business to your organization with relative ease. They also include advertising services which allow your business to appear on search engine results for a small fee. By bidding on how much you're willing to pay for your business to appear nearest the top of a search engine results list, you can improve the exposure level of your organization.
As your paid-for ad appears, if it is the chosen site matching the needs of the searcher, it is then clicked on and forwarded to your actual website. Here lies another possible charge you would incur from the search engine ad called a "click through". You can pay a fee for people to click on your ad and be forwarded to your site. The cost is relatively low but can add up if the traffic volume for your site is very high. Now do you have all your bases covered? There are many enterprising individuals out there who have created a niche market for capturing those Internet users whose typos can steal business from your hard working system.
Many times Internet searchers can misspell any part of your domain name. Even though a search engine could give quantitative results that include spelling corrections, there is still the possibility your specific site will not be accessed due to a close spelling of your domain name. Why is this a concern? Your website value is derived by the number of "hits" or visits. That value can greatly enhance profitability of selling ads on your website and give your organization a great measure of income. If someone has initiated a website with a similar and closely spelled domain name, they could be diverting a large percentage of your traffic to their site.
On their site they could be getting paid for "click through" referrals, or even ad space, to other advertisers due to the amount of traffic driven to their site by searchers misspelling your domain name. This is called typosquatting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typosquatting). Since the Internet first came into being, the concept of a domain name being used for intellectual property was not initially accepted. After many years of disputes and lawsuits the governing agency for Internet domain names, ICAAN, ruled that those organizations who own trademark, copyright, and otherwise legal names, were protected from "cyber squatting".
Cyber squatting was a huge business where legal names such as Pepsi, Coke, Nike, and many others, had their legally registered organizational names registered by someone other than the real owner and "parked" on the Internet waiting for the real owner to offer to buy the domain name for a handsome and hefty price. Legislation, such as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999, and organizations like World intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as well as ICANN, set up guidelines and dispute resolution for claims against on line IP violation making this type of intrusion illegal. Clever prognosticators thought they found a way around these deterrents by using typos to steer traffic from original sites.
Entries for legal websites such as "PepsiProducts.com" were mistyped as "PespiProduct.com" and steered to a different site. Another example would be "iophone.com" instead of "iphone.com". But legal ramifications now also exist to deter typo squatters from profiting at the legal domain name owners expense. Many cases have already been won in court by owners of the legal copyright domain names (http://library.findlaw.com/2004/May/11/133410.html). As a rule, any organization that depends heavily upon Internet traffic to produce product recognition, ad sales, and other services for profit should have a research team in place to constantly monitor for illegal cyber and typo squatting. The end results can be very costly if sufficient monitoring is not initiated. If nothing else, domain names are very cheap from most ISP providers. You can register all your own typosquatting sites and simply point them to the original domain that is your proper and legal trademark or business name.
Ernest H. Hays is an Innovation Specialist and the founder of The Logical Computer Company, Inc., an IT consulting firm formed in 1984, serving hundreds of new clients each year in Central Florida. Ernest is a "bleeding edge" technology evangelist and has guided unborn, new, and older businesses through the rigors of applying just the right technology, at just the right time, and at just the right cost, to the right part of each business. His motto "Turning High Tech into Common Sense" brought small, medium, large, and commercial, as well as governmental, entities to utilize his services.
Do you want to make money buying and selling domain names?Then go and read the Online Money Makings articles.And get to know how you can make money on Domain Names.You will be amaze you did.
You've assume all these years that you should have no worry or concern regarding expenditure for enforcement of your trademark. Years, that is, before the Internet and search engines became not only commonplace, but the means by which most of your modern day customers find your goods or services. You have gone through all the necessary steps to obtain a domain name for your organization and to include as many other derivatives of your trademark or service as you can imagine.
This is so that present and potential customers will have as little problem as possible finding and remembering your sites. Search engines provide a vital service for business domain names due to the fact they can drive new business to your organization with relative ease. They also include advertising services which allow your business to appear on search engine results for a small fee. By bidding on how much you're willing to pay for your business to appear nearest the top of a search engine results list, you can improve the exposure level of your organization.
As your paid-for ad appears, if it is the chosen site matching the needs of the searcher, it is then clicked on and forwarded to your actual website. Here lies another possible charge you would incur from the search engine ad called a "click through". You can pay a fee for people to click on your ad and be forwarded to your site. The cost is relatively low but can add up if the traffic volume for your site is very high. Now do you have all your bases covered? There are many enterprising individuals out there who have created a niche market for capturing those Internet users whose typos can steal business from your hard working system.
Many times Internet searchers can misspell any part of your domain name. Even though a search engine could give quantitative results that include spelling corrections, there is still the possibility your specific site will not be accessed due to a close spelling of your domain name. Why is this a concern? Your website value is derived by the number of "hits" or visits. That value can greatly enhance profitability of selling ads on your website and give your organization a great measure of income. If someone has initiated a website with a similar and closely spelled domain name, they could be diverting a large percentage of your traffic to their site.
On their site they could be getting paid for "click through" referrals, or even ad space, to other advertisers due to the amount of traffic driven to their site by searchers misspelling your domain name. This is called typosquatting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typosquatting). Since the Internet first came into being, the concept of a domain name being used for intellectual property was not initially accepted. After many years of disputes and lawsuits the governing agency for Internet domain names, ICAAN, ruled that those organizations who own trademark, copyright, and otherwise legal names, were protected from "cyber squatting".
Cyber squatting was a huge business where legal names such as Pepsi, Coke, Nike, and many others, had their legally registered organizational names registered by someone other than the real owner and "parked" on the Internet waiting for the real owner to offer to buy the domain name for a handsome and hefty price. Legislation, such as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999, and organizations like World intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as well as ICANN, set up guidelines and dispute resolution for claims against on line IP violation making this type of intrusion illegal. Clever prognosticators thought they found a way around these deterrents by using typos to steer traffic from original sites.
Entries for legal websites such as "PepsiProducts.com" were mistyped as "PespiProduct.com" and steered to a different site. Another example would be "iophone.com" instead of "iphone.com". But legal ramifications now also exist to deter typo squatters from profiting at the legal domain name owners expense. Many cases have already been won in court by owners of the legal copyright domain names (http://library.findlaw.com/2004/May/11/133410.html). As a rule, any organization that depends heavily upon Internet traffic to produce product recognition, ad sales, and other services for profit should have a research team in place to constantly monitor for illegal cyber and typo squatting. The end results can be very costly if sufficient monitoring is not initiated. If nothing else, domain names are very cheap from most ISP providers. You can register all your own typosquatting sites and simply point them to the original domain that is your proper and legal trademark or business name.
Ernest H. Hays is an Innovation Specialist and the founder of The Logical Computer Company, Inc., an IT consulting firm formed in 1984, serving hundreds of new clients each year in Central Florida. Ernest is a "bleeding edge" technology evangelist and has guided unborn, new, and older businesses through the rigors of applying just the right technology, at just the right time, and at just the right cost, to the right part of each business. His motto "Turning High Tech into Common Sense" brought small, medium, large, and commercial, as well as governmental, entities to utilize his services.
Do you want to make money buying and selling domain names?Then go and read the Online Money Makings articles.And get to know how you can make money on Domain Names.You will be amaze you did.
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