Legal News

What?s in a Name? $50K, Perhaps, If You?re the Victim of Cybersquatting

By Dan Slater

Cybersquatters, beware. Verizon said it’s been awarded $33.2 million in a default ruling against a San Francisco firm.

The default ruling, according to Verizon, said the firm, registrar OnlineNIC, “unlawfully registered at least 663 domain names that were either identical to or confusingly similar to Verizon trademarks.” The company was awarded $50,000 per name for OnlineNIC’s “bad-faith registrations” that were intended to steer traffic away from Verizon’s sites, it said. Here’s the WSJ report.

Verizon, however, may not see any money, as registrar OnlineNIC never appeared in federal court in California to defend itself.

Complaints about cybersquatting — where someone sets up a Web site using a trademarked name and then profits by selling the name to the owner — surged to a record in 2007, according to World Intellectual Property Organization, a watchdog group. The practice was barred in the U.S. in 1999.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 24, 2008 (boomark / email).