Cybersquatting on the increase: report

01-06-2006

by Charlie Taylor

Website owners need to be more vigilant in monitoring the use of their domain names, a leading Irish solicitors firm has warned.

According to Dublin-based O'Donnell Sweeney Solicitors, cybersquatting is on the increase due to website owners' failure to keep an eye on their domain names.

Recent figures released by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a UN agency whose aim is to promote intellectual property (IP) protection, indicate that there was a 20 percent increase in the number of cybersquatting incidents filed with the body last year.

WIPO's figures show that a total of 1,456 cybersquatting cases filed with its Arbitration and Mediation Centre in 2005. This means that, on average, four cybersquatting cases were filed with WIPO every day last year, the highest number of cases handled by the centre since 2001.

Kate Colleary, a solicitor with the O'Donnell Sweeney IT Litigation Group claims that while many websites owners are aware of the need to protect their website addresses in the dot-com (.com) sphere, the recent introduction of new top level domains such as dot-eu (.eu) means that they need to be more vigilant than ever in monitoring the use of their brand names online.

"The fact that there has been such a large increase in cybersquatting cases in 2005, and that many of those cases involved recently registered domain names, underlines the need for continued vigilance by brand owners. If brand owners are not vigilant, they could ultimately be forced to compete with cybersquatters for their own trademark," said Colleary.

On a related note, companies in the Midwest region are apparently being targeted by a firm called DomainGuard Ireland Ltd, which is offering to sell dot-eu domain names at vastly inflated prices.

According to Sean Ryan, managing director of Limerick-based ISP Elive, one of his customers, The Belleek Shop, recently received a letter from DomainGuard which said it had purchased the dot-eu domain address on their behalf in order to "protect" them from cybersquatters.

"A customer of mine who runs an online gift shop from Ennis received a letter which was written using scare tactics," Ryan told ENN.

"The letter stated that the new dot-eu domains were now available but that because of the problem with cybersquatters DomainGuard had registered different domain names on my customer's behalf and that, for a once-off fee of EUR2,100 the customer could buy the domain name from them. The letter was written in a way that suggested that DomainGuard was doing the customer a favour by securing the address, which obviously wasn't the case," he added.

According to Ryan, the letter was signed by someone with a local name and address, and a mobile number was included too. However, the letter said that because the company was processing hundreds of applications it might be difficult for interested parties to reach the firm so they should leave a message and the company would get back to them.

A search by Ryan found that the VAT registration number included in the letter is invalid. Moreover, a search for DomainGuard Ireland Limited on the Companies Registration Office (CRO) database brings up a negative result. Further investigation by a Limerick-based blogger has found that the BelleekShop.eu domain is registered to an individual from County Clare.