Domain name booking and cyber-squatting is a creating a new legal problem as the web has crossed any country’s limit.
Keeping the legal control over the un-lawful activities over the web, most of the countries are modifying the IT laws including India, US and the European union.
Here is a recent IPR (intellectual Property Rights) case of domain name booking by cybersquatters against the popular telecom service Verizon and the trademarks registered by the company.
Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is taking it to cybersquatters, and the telecom said it has been awarded $33.2 million from a company trying to intentionally confuse Web users.
The ruling, which the telecom said is the largest-ever cybersquatting judgment, said OnlineNIC “unlawfully registered at least 663 domain names that were either identical or confusingly similar to Verizon’s trademarks.” The telecom was awarded $50,000 per domain name, which included the likes of iphonefromverizon.com and treoverizon.com.
OnlineNIC is a San Francisco-based domain registrar, and no representatives showed up to court. The company also faces similar lawsuits from Microsoft and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO)
Source : InformationWeek
I would suggest to check the brand names and trademarks before you register a domain and avoid committing such activities.
