I work for a pretty huge corporation. We're about to do a brand new website re-design and launch this year. Our Canadian branch wants to secure the .ca domain name for our company, but it has been cybersquatted. After about 5 months or so, their legal team is getting close to getting that domain name back, but the options are to negotiate a price with the cybersquatter (which I highly advised them NOT to do, since we shouldn't have to pay a penny for it), or take the guy to court and spend some $15,000 on that route. It looks like the branch is not willing to go through the time & money to go to court. This kind of raises the question - is cybersquatting still profitable? I'm talking about registering domains that are exact TM'ed words...seems like even big companies aren't willing to suffer through the court process and would rather just do a payoff (except for massive companies like Microsoft of Google, of course)...
Well it really depends I think. It is a big risk first of all. Second I personally hate cybersqutters because there are domainers out there that work hard to build up their honest domain portfolios with no TM names and they just give the domain industry a terrible name when they are just a small number of people doing that. I mean dont get me wrong there is a lot of money to be made there but it depends on the person and the ethics. If I was a business owner and wanted to get my business domain from a cybersquatter I would work out what is cheaper and just pick the cheaper option. So if it is cheaper for your company to just pay the cybersquatter then thats what they should do.
Cybersquatting can still be quite lucrative. For example, check out the website resolving to the domain name <nordstoms.com>. This parked website gets 5,000 to 10,000 visitors each month. If one out of ten visitors click on an advertisement, we're talking about some pretty decent money. And if you multiply that by a thousand domain names, it can be quite lucrative.
Indeed, cybersquitting can be a payoff. I do it all the time. And I do it all the time without punity. BUT the risk, if it it worth it for you, may not be long lived. Depending of how and how you "cybersquat" you may eventually have to surrender your domain. My very last experience was with rolex2009. But it took them almost one year to claim it back from me. Registered intellectual property is not and should not be an universal property on the internet. I love to copy and infringe Chinese copyrights as they do to us.
Suppose it is, with my luck though I'd be down much more money than potentially make lol. Then again the way I see it you'd have to have the same topic of site related to that domain/what the user was looking for or it would be pretty useless
Cybersquatting is not a crime. People do squatter when free space is available to them. This Earth is very small and so is the cyber space which has been monopolized a long time ago. Big corporations took over the free given people rights to internet, only for their money purposes.
If your big company is "about" to do your .ca function, and you find obstacle because it already exists, you cannot say (and accuse) of cyberberquatting. Legally you have to prove your point in court. If it is so important financially for you right now, you must buy out the cybersquatter or fight him in court. And you can do so with: WIPO Domain Name Decisions. and if your so called cybersquatter really exists in substance you have to assess his cybersquatting position before hand in respect to your own "acquired" legal position on the given market you pretend to have rights.
The main reason I asked -- if you can really make money doing that (simply because companies are not willing to spend a year and a half waiting to go to court), then it would probably be worth my while doing the same thing To companies this big, spending $15,000 in court is a spit in the ocean. The thing we cannot afford to do is delay the website launch by over a year. I've only cybersquatted one domain in my life - it's for a comic book movie that should be coming out in the next few years. I actually got a domain for it in the format "xmovie.com" (where x=the actual name of the comic book).
Please note that while cybersquatting may prove lucrative, you may be liable under the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act for up to $100,000 per domain name if the trademark owner elects to file suit. Having said that, many trademark owners attempt to recover domain names through the ICANN's Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, which does not permit the award of damages. However, you should be aware of all of the potential risks.
I think you just need to have alook at how many people are cybersquatting, with all the potential law implications aside in must be still very lucrative.
When did I ever say anything about it being a crime? Please actually read my post next time before replying to it, idiot. As you can see, I was saying how I would feel doing it myself financially, where the hell you got the idea about me regarding to crime and rights of freedom, I don't know.
That guy wasn't cybersquatting though, he registered that domain name to use with his business fairly and legitimately. There have been a bunch of court cases regarding it and the Nissan automotive company keeps losing. They could have just paid him for the name, but kept going after him via lawsuit and haven't been able to win. Cybersquatting can be profitable - until you run across one firm who wants to send a message and sues you for damages. $50,000 in legal fees + settlement later, it doesn't seem so profitable.
It's all speculation without knowing anything about the company but if they wanted the .ca why didn't they pick it up when they registered the original name. I don't know what the law is, but if someone registered the name in Canada I don't think your company should be able to take it away just because they now decide they also want a ca name.
Yes, if you're a company you should always register all popular extensions of your name whenever possible. However, if you are Acme Tools (and have it trademarked) and some guy in Canada registers AcmeTools.ca, you had better believe you can get the name back from him. If it's in good faith, usually Acme will pay the owner a couple hundred bucks to hand the name over, but sometimes it doesn't go that easily...
It may cost your company $15.000 but the squatter will have to spend thousands of dollars too and lose his domain name at the end. Many cybersquatters gamble with the fact that the companies will not sue them, and if they do then they give up the domain name before they need to spend thousands of dollars on a case they know they are going to lose. This is specially the case for individual cybersquatters as opposed to enterprises with cash to fight in court.
most cybersquatters will not spend thousands of dollars on fighting court cases unless they are assured of a win..
It's because they're a bunch of idiots. This was my complaint to my boss. What's worse is that this company didn't even register its own .net - some cybersquatter in Korea bought it in 2002 and has had it parked since then...also, someone bought our #1 company name misspelling .com...I'm guessing the guy is getting AT LEAST 1000 type-in hits per day, because our company name is a 5-letter word that has a misspelling that half of the population uses. As for us, we get about 5-6k type-ins per day.
Hi all Ive just come across the phrase cyber squatting having read this thread and I believe I may have done this only yesterday. I bought a domain name which is a take on a well known airline. Ive added 3 letters to the airlines name which now makes a 2 word name which kinda takes the piss out of them but not in a libel or slanderous way. I hit upon the idea to set up a consumer group because of the growing army of complaints and their lack of customer service. Could I be in trouble ? btw there is 1 similar site that actually uses the company name and another name with it that the airline has tried unsuccesfully to shut down.