Microsoft filed two civil lawsuits against four named defendants who are illegally using the software giant’s name to set up sites for personal profit. An additional suit was filed against Dan Brown, of Long Beach, Calif., who registered 85 domain names that aimed at misusing Microsoft’s trademarks.
The lawsuits were filed under the anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), a U.S. federal law enacted in 1999 to protect the owners of trademarks from abuse by domain name abusers.
At the same time, Microsoft is filing a “John Doe” lawsuit, issuing subpoenas to the domain name registrars — one of the goals being to identify cybersquatters who hide their identities. An estimated one-fourth of all domain registrations containing Microsoft trademark terms are registered using privacy services that hide the identity of the name holder, according to the Redding-based firm.
“Cybersquatters” and “typosquatters” are people who have registered domain names containing trademarked terms or misspelled words with the goal of illegally profiting from them using online ad networks.
It’s a common problem; instead of clicking on a Web page hyperlink or using a bookmark, you manually type in a domain name (like “xbox360.com”) into the browser’s address bar. But you accidentally misspell the name, or maybe you enter a word or phrase in the browser’s address bar, like “microsoftrebate.com.” Microsoft, in fact, does not maintain a Web presence at either of these domains.
Illegal Profiteering
Visiting these addresses may direct you to a page full of pay-per-click advertisements and nothing to do with what you’re searching for. Each click on one of these ads delivers revenue to the cybersquatter paid through an online ad network. The result is confusion for visitors to Microsoft’s legitimate Web sites and illegal profiteering through the misuse of intellectual property.
On an average day, Microsoft states, some 2,000 domain names are registered that contain Microsoft trademark terms. Of those, at least 75 percent are owned by professional domain name holding operations.
Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement attorney Aaron Kornblum reports that the noticed a surge in domain name registrations containing Microsoft’s intellectual property company earlier this year while monitoring Web sites registered by online “phishing” operations.
“Microsoft has witnessed a virtual land rush for Internet domain names with the goal of driving traffic for profit,” Kornblum said in a statement. “Placing a high profile or pop culture trademark in your domain name is a tempting but illegal way to generate pay-per-click revenue.”
Protecting Business Interests
Yankee Group analyst Andrew Jaquith acknowledged that cybersquatting is a serious problem for companies like Microsoft that generate a lot of online traffic. “Humans have a propensity to mistype when entering a URL, and this activity takes advantage of that,” he said.
At the same time, Microsoft has a lot of business interests to protect and can’t monitor every site to make sure they are legitimate, Jaquith said. “Taking legal action is one way to thwart this practice.”
