Is cyberquatting legal?

He has: 688 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

This probably gets complicated with different international laws but I thought I read about laws to help combat this practice. My situation is that one particular person (or company) registered abccompanyname.com .org .net .biz .info .tv and .us. There is a website on .com only and all the rest go to a page that says 'I own all these names. if you want one make me an offer.'

The Webmistress's picture

She has: 5,586 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

In the UK it depends on whether the company is regiestered as a limited company. If they are they have rights over their company name and if the cybersquatter was taken to court they'd be made to give up the names in favour of the company.

Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....

He has: 1,758 posts

Joined: Jul 2002

Theres also issues about trademarks

IE if i sold a product called andys super duper toilet roll and i had it trademarked, i'd probably win a case for andyssuperdupertoiletroll.com etc...

I dont think the issue is whether or not its legal, its more a question of whether its morally right. I don't think it is.

Andy

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

the trade mark issue thing is weird, not so long ago there was a battle over the webname newzealand.com (not sure if it had underscores), the NZ govt. wanted the name as some American guy had it, long story short, the American guy won but offered it to NZ govt. for one million (nice little profit)

Want to join the discussion? Create an account or log in if you already have one. Joining is fast, free and painless! We’ll even whisk you back here when you’ve finished.