Cybersquate to your hearts content

dna said:

There is so much bad information concerning cybersquatting and trademark infringing being circulated on Namepros that I thought I should make quote available:

"....while the infringing party stands to lose nothing except the registration fee (usually under $10) for the original domain and the registrar of the infringing name incurs no penalty at all."

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Mmmmmmm, I see your quote and raise you this....

What is the ACPA?

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act is a federal law that took affect on November 29, 1999. This new domain name dispute law is intended to give trademark and service mark owners legal remedies against defendants who obtain domain names “in bad faith” that are identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark. If a mark is a famous mark, the same remedies are available if the domain name is identical to, confusingly similar to or dilutive of the mark...

...What Remedies May be Granted by the Court for Violations of the Act?

The Act authorizes a court to order the forfeiture or cancellation of a domain name or the transfer of the domain name to the owner of the mark. In lieu of actual damages, the plaintiff may elect statutory damages and the court has discretion to award damages of not less than $1,000 and not more than $100,000 per domain name, as the court considers just. 15 U.S.C. § 1117(d).

An infamous cybersquatter named John Zuccarini lost an ACPA lawsuit in October of 2000, when the court awarded the plaintiff statutory damages of $500,000 for each of five domain names that were obtained in bad faith and that were confusingly similar to the plaintiff’s trademark. The court also ordered Mr. Zuccarini to pay attorneys’ fees of more than $30,000.

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Source: http://keytlaw.com/netlaw/domain-name-dispute-faq/

Yeah, THERE SURE IS a lot of bad information concerning cybersquatting and trademark infringement being passed around. Cough, cough. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge...

I just follow common sense; I don't exploit other businesses traffic (aka. typos), I avoid domains that clearly relate to entities who are well known and generally I avoid earning without putting some hard work myself.

Note that I mainly do parking and doing the above is very hard but it can happen if one is careful not to step in other people's toes.

That is the reason I believe that in my three years into domaining I have never had an issue with UDRPs.

I'm one of the people who has come under attack foir this. My policy is to put myself in the place of the trademark owner, and reflect on the way I would like to see the name used. There are so many name variants, that it is not economic to register all of them to defend a trademark. With my "Sony video" name. I included prominent links to the various Sony video sites, I stated that I was not affiliated with Sony in any way, and that should Sony want the name, I would be preopared to give it to them at no cost.

I made sure that any comments on the site were favourable to Sony, and that no advertising or links were associated with any competing products. I owned the name for a few years, and didn't ever receive any contact from them. They must have known that I was using the name, because of the direct links to their sites..

And I really believe that Sony products are high quality, despite the fact that I let the domain drop when I was clearing out my portfolio. I see that a Chinese company has picked up the name.