Stars and famous brands are continuing to battle cyber-squatters, with the number of complaints filed in 2005 jumping by a fifth, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) said on Wednesday.
Wipo said its arbitration centre received 1 456 cyber-squatting cases last year, or 20% more than in 2004.
Disputed website addresses included those tied to the business world such as Renaulttrucks.com, Sony-ericsson.org and Askralphlauren.com.
Hollywood star Morgan Freeman filed for Morganfreeman.com, Italian football club Juventus for Juvestore.com, and the estate of French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for Thelittleprince.com.
It is simple for anyone to register an internet domain name, and while some cyber-squatters are just fans, others aim to redirect visitors automatically to pornographic or counterfeit goods sites.
”It’s a commercial model based on the number of hits on a site,” said Francis Gurry, Wipo’s deputy director general.
A famous name increases the chances of a site showing up in an internet search and therefore draw in more web surfers, which in turn helps the cyber-squatter earn money from advertising on the site.
”Consistently, sports and entertainment personalities are cyber-squatted,” said Gurry.
”Luxury brands also tend to go after each and every name. They tend to have a zero-tolerance cyber-squatting policy,” he told reporters.
”Some others adopt a half-and-half approach,” Gurry added, for example by trying to clamp down on variants of their name that use .com but generally letting lower-profile versions using country names such as .uk or .fr slide.
Since 1999, trademark holders have been able to file cyber-squatting complaints with the United Nations’s intellectual property body. A person with a common-law right to a name is also able to lodge a case at Wipo.
The organisation’s arbitrator then rules who has the right to use a particular web address: Wipo’s panels found in favour of the complainant in 84% of cases last year.
But Wipo cannot impose financial penalties. Instead, complainants have to turn to the courts, which can be complicated if the person who abused their name is based in a different country.
The biggest users of the Wipo system last year were rights-holders in the United States, France, Britain and Germany. Those in their line of fire were mostly from the US, Britain, South Korea, China and Spain.
Gurry said that it is difficult to gauge if the increased caseload shows that cyber-squatting is increasing, or if rights-holders are increasingly robust in protecting their names.
But the trend seems to be tied to the expansion of the internet, he said, noting that there are now about 60-million registered domain names.
”This underlines the need for continued vigilance by intellectual property owners,” he said. — Sapa-AFP