Microsoft Aims Legal Guns At Cybersquatters

CyberSquatters, or online miscreants who allegedly earn illegal profits from thousands of Web sites, which infringe on a company’s trademarked name, are now being taken to court by Microsoft. This litigation by Microsoft is a first for the IT giant and is aimed at ‘cybersqatters’, stemming from a 1999 law called the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act(ACPA). The lawsuit is designed to target those who registered the largest number of ‘infringing’ domain names, as part of Microsoft’s broader plan to beef up its crackdown on cybersquatters and typosquatters.

The company also announced plans to expand its crackdown on resale of such domain names on Internet auction sites.

The ACPA subjects anyone who “registers, traffics in or uses a domain name that is identical to, confusingly similar or dilutive of” an existing trademark to up to $100,000 in damages. Earlier this week, Redmond filed three lawsuits in federal court, claiming that cybersquatters have registered hundreds of domain names with the purpose of reaping illegal profits, from sites like WindowsLiveTutorial.com and HaloChamp.com. According to watchdogs with Internet Identity, a company hired by Microsoft several years ago to monitor domain name registrations, on an average, more than 2,000 sites containing Microsoft trademarks are registered in a single day. They estimated that about 75 percent are owned by professional domain name holding corporations and that 90 percent of all registrations occur among those hoping for illegal profits.

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