Cybersquatting cases broke record in 2008, dispute regulator says

A United Nations agency received a record 2,329 complaints in 2008 about the practice of cybersquatting, up eight per cent from the year before.

Research in Motion's BlackBerry and Canada Post were among those involved in complaints, but less than two per cent of cases were filed from Canada, the World Intellectual Property Organization reported Monday.

The UN agency is one of the main organizations worldwide responsible for resolving domain name disputes.

Cybersquatting refers to the registration of an internet domain name containing the trademarked names of companies by someone who is not the trademark holder. That can drive "accidental" traffic to the cybersquatter's website site, boosting ad revenues, but often upsets the holders of trademarks, as it may make it more difficult for users to find their sites.

According to the report, complainants from the U.S. filed the most complaints — 6,452 or nearly 44 per cent of the total — while France came in second with 10 per cent.

In 30 per cent of cases, the parties involved in the dispute managed to settle it without the decision of a WIPO panel. In the rest, 85 per cent of decisions favoured the complainant.

New names could worsen problem: WIPO

The number of sites available for cybersquatters to register is limited by the number of allowable generic top level domain names — the right-most label in the name, such as .com or .org.

Francis Gurry, director general of WIPO, said in a statement that given the increase in cybersquatting, he is concerned that new generic top level domain names are about to be allowed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the organization responsible for such rules.

If not properly managed, the new names will "provide abundant opportunities for cybersquatters to seize old ground in new domains," Gurry said.

However, Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, downplayed the report and what it means for cybersquatting.

He noted in his blog that the other organization that resolves domain name disputes, the National Arbitration Forum, received fewer complaints in 2008 than the year before. That group announced last week that it had handled 1,770 domain name disputes in 2008.

Geist added that overall, the number of domain name disputes grew by only three per cent last year, even though the number of domain names on the internet grew by 12 per cent in 2008, according to the internet infrastructure company Verisign.

Domain name disputes are governed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' uniform dispute resolution policy. Under that policy, the four organizations authorized to resolve disputes worldwide are:

• Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre.
• The Czech Arbitration Court.
• The National Arbitration Forum.
• The World Intellectual Property Organization.