February 2006
WIPO Reports Rise in Cybersquatting
It has been revealed that there has been a 20% increase in the number of cybersquatting disputes reported to The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) over the past year.
WIPO has attempted to look at the reasons behind the increase and has suggested that one possible reason is the introduction by ICANN of new top-level domains e.g. “.jobs” or “.travel”. where cybersquatters have managed to make abusive registrations of domains including third party trade marks.
WIPO’s arbitration and mediation centre dealt with 1,456 cybersquatting cases in 2005. This total does not include the number of cases which are dealt with through the courts or between rights owner and cybersquatter directly thereby making it hard to put a total on the real number of incidents.
The new .EU domain name is subject to very stringent issue procedures in order to try and avoid the complexities that cybersquatting has caused in the past. That is not to say that the .EU system is without its attempts at cybersquatting,
Briffa Comment:
This announcement raises several important issues for intellectual property rights owners.
Firstly it is generally easier to recover a domain name if you have a registered trade mark since the burden of proof of rights in the domain name is greatly reduced. Secondly it is wise to acquire as many domain names as is reasonably possible that relate to your brand. Domain names are comparatively cheap to obtain. Thirdly keep good records of your domain names and don’t let them lapse!
Ultimately it is up to individual rights owners to make sure that they are maximising their rights and then once the rights are in place that they are policed effectively. Briffa will be more than happy to assist in advising you on how to protect and enforce your rights and have successfully recovered many domains for clients both through direct communication with the cybersquatter and also through the ICANN dispute resolution system. Even with a judgement from ICANN it is still up to the rights owner to enforce that judgement which can be easier said than done, again an area with which Briffa can assist.
Sarah Jeffery
sarah@briffa.com