Cybersquatting

Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting) is the practice of registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name, with a bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The term is derived from "squatting", which is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building that the squatter does not own, rent, or otherwise have permission to use. In popular terms, "cybersquatting" is the term most frequently used to describe the deliberate, bad faith abusive registration of a domain name in violation of trademark rights. However, precisely because of its popular currency, the term has different meanings to different people. Some people, for example, include "warehousing", or the practice of registering a collection of domain names corresponding to trademarks with the intention of selling the registrations to the owners of the trademarks, within the notion of cybersquatting, while others distinguish between the two terms. In the former definition, the cybersquatter may offer to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price. Similarly, some consider "cyberpiracy" to be interchangeable with "cybersquatting", whereas others consider that the former term relates to violation of copyright in the content of websites, rather than to abusive domain name registrations. Because of the various interpretations of the term, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in a 1999 report, approved by its member states, considered it as the abusive registration of a domain name. Since 1999, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has provided an administrative process wherein a trademark holder can attempt to claim a squatted site. Trademark owners in 2021 filed a record 5,128 cases under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)'s Arbitration and Mediation Center, eclipsing the 2020 level by 22%.