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March 27, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The number of cases of "cybersquatting," the act of registering trademarks on the Internet for financial gain, has risen considerably in the past three years, said the World Intellectual Property Organisation (wipo.int) on Thursday.
The organization's arbitration and mediation centre received a record 2,156 complaints in 2007, 18 percent more than 2006 and 48 percent more than 2005. As a specialized agency of the United Nations, the WIPO strives to developing a balanced and accessible international intellectual property system.
"These increases confirm that 'cybersquatting' remains a significant issue for rights holders," says Francis Gurry, WIPO deputy director general.
As the domain name registration system continues to evolve, the act of cybersquatting has become a growing concern for trademark owners around the world, said the agency. Cybersquatting cases "reflect current trends and upcoming events," listing Facebook, MySpace, Stella McCartney and J.R.R. Tolkien as the top targets of abusive registration.
One in 10 complaints stemmed from pharmaceutical companies, because of the "numerous permutations of protected names" registered for websites that offer or link to online medication sales. The next largest group of claims came from the banking and finance industry, followed by Internet and IT.
The most complaints came from the United States which had 40 percent of the total number of complaints, while France and Britain followed in second and third place, respectively. On the other hand, the highest number of culprits came from US, Britain and China.
About a quarter of decisions were settled without a panel discussion, said WIPO. Of the remaining cases, 85 percent of panel decisions called for a transfer of the domain names to the complainant, while 15 percent of the decisions resulted in the registration holder being allowed to keep the domain name.
The agency added that trademark abusers are using privacy services to hide such abusive registrations. Combined with the increase in trademark abuse, this raises significant issues about new domains to be announced for the end of this year.
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October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
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Comment by Anonymous on Friday, March 28, 2008
National Arbitration Forum Reports Rise in Domain Name Disputes
The National Arbitration Forum, an international provider of alternative dispute resolution services, administered a total of 1,805 domain name disputes in 2007, up from 1,658 disputes in 2006. The National Arbitration Forum has been approved as a domain name dispute resolution program provider by the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) since 1999.
http://www.adrforum.com/newsroom.aspx?itemID=1363