There are a few ways to stop a cybersquatter – a cybersquatter being a person who has illegally purchased a domain name associated with your brand or trademark in order to sell it to you for a high price. One popular method of stopping cybersquatters is to use ICANN’s Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, which helps trademark owners recover domains that are being held ransom by a less than scrupulous third party.
A Way to Stop A Cybersquatter: Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy
Pretty much every domain name that is registered agrees to the terms of ICANN’s Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy, which outlines a procedure by which a trademark owner can get control of a cybersquatted domain. For the policy to work in your favor, there are three things that need to be in place:
- The domain name in question is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark in which you have rights.
- The person registering the domain has no legitimate rights or interest in the domain name.
- The domain name is being registered or used in bad faith.
Each of these factors involve a legal conclusion, so an attorney’s guidance couldn’t hurt if you think you have a legitimate claim. The last factor, the bad faith factor, can be the most problematic one to show and it usually involves a person who registered a domain expressly to mess with your business. Sometimes these people are competitors and sometimes they are people who see an opportunity to get money out of a business who wants to register a domain name associated with their trademark.
Either way, there needs to be some showing of that bad intent – it can’t always be inferred from the mere fact that someone registered a domain.
If the above factors are shown, a proceeding can be started at ICANN to get the domain transferred – it’s not a very long process but has specific rules that must be followed for it to work.
