For the cost of 2 cups of coffee, one man half a world away held a $25 million empire hostage.
There is an alarming amount of domain abuse and cybersquatting originating from the country of India. The good guys are winning, but the bad guys are making it expensive and time-consuming. The epic Brent Oxley dispute with GoDaddy is a prime example of today’s abuse facing the domain ecosystem.
There are a couple simple ways to avoid being victimized by the most common scams.
Register as many of your domains as possible on the root name.
Last year, my company JuicyAds was contacted by someone looking to sell the domain “juicyads.online” They had registered the previous day for approximately 99 cents online. In broken English, they stated that they wanted 4-figures for a domain that violated our multiple trademarks. There was a maddening back and forth where we repeatedly advised the cybersquatter that what they were doing was not only illegal and in bad faith but that we would seize the domain from them. Their reply was pretty much, “it’s cheaper to pay me than to file with WIPO.”
We took the case to WIPO, and in plain view of WIPO arbitrators, the cybersquatter continued to try to solicit the sale of the domain for amounts ranging from $750 to $3,000. Simultaneously, this individual, “Manas Biswal” aka “Profitz” fabricated a backstory that they were developing ‘an online juice drink cart store where users can order juice drinks online.’ Even WIPO stated in their written decision that it seriously doubted their use of the term “JuicyAds” for the project, and it “did not fit that narrative.” Even after the domain was seized, Mr. Manas Biswal continued to demand payment of $1,500. He had already lost the domain in the decision favoring JuicyAds, and it was subsequently transferred. Game over.
Many factors compound the domain squatting problem. The ever-increasing number of TLDs makes it difficult for any business to “register everything” and especially not in an economical way. Also, the low-priced initial registration price makes certain domains attractive for squatting and extortion attempts.
The best strategy here is to take the time and register the cheapest domains with your brand name. There are many TLDs that cost only a few dollars to register and those are the most attractive for these pseudo-extortion attempts. When domain squatters start looking at domains to purchase to try to squeeze out a purchase from a Trademark holder, they don’t want to be shelling out $25 or $50 per domain to do it. It is cost prohibitive.
Read the rest in XBIZ:
https://www.xbiz.com/pub/xbizworld/2021-06/index.html?page=38