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Cybersquarters are cyber-vultures who squat on a trademark by abusively registering it, or a version of it, as their own. For $35, a cybersquatter can register a variation of your company name, brand, or trademark. In mere minutes, they can profit from your image and reputation. Cybersquatters register product and company names, movie titles, slogans, and celebrity names to hijack domains, earn money by pay-per-click advertising, compete against the true owner, or set up hate sites to disparage the trademark holder.

 

"Typosquatting," a form of cybersquatting, involves registering misspelled trademarks. Users misspell up to 20 percent of URLs, which results in customers and millions in revenue being routed to competitor sites. No business is immune. Harrods successfully sued to wrestle the harrods.com domain from cybersquatters. Also, musician Keith Urban sued Keith Urban, a New Jersey painter who used the site keithurban.com.

 

It is critical to police your trademarks: 1) Google trademarks regularly; (2) obtain “cybersquashing” software to patrol the Web; (3) timely renew your domain names; (4) retain intellectual property counsel to protect your brands; (5) register all domain versions of your names [.com, .org, .biz, .info, .net, etc.];.and (7) register all variants [singular, plural, misspellings, hyphenations and the pesky “sucks” variant].

 

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 can provide relief. It allows trademark owners to take cybersquatters to court and seek up to $100,000 in damages.