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Out-Law News 1 min. read

AltaVista wins 43 domain names from typosquatter


A company with offices in Latvia and Panama that registered 43 variations on the name AltaVista in what appears to be an attempt at advertising a Latvian-based internet bank, has been ordered to transfer them to the search engine that owns the registered trade marks in the word.

Grandtotal Finances Limited registered names such as altadista.com, altavixta.com and eltavista.com with internet registrar Network Solutions Inc. Grandtotal was relying on the typing errors of those entering addresses in their web browsers. Each of the domain names led to a web site offering a choice of linking to the AltaVista search engine or linking to paritate.com, an internet bank apparently based in Latvia.

Grandtotal did not make any submissions in its defence to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) panellist to whom AltaVista took its dispute to be judged under the rules of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

AltaVista reported to the WIPO panellist that Grandtotal and its affiliate companies registered at least 460 other domain names including misspellings of other famous trade marks, such as swisair.com, lycoz.com, retuers.com and volswagen.com.

The practice of registering and using domain names in bad faith is known as cybersquatting. Registering and using misspellings of domain names in bad faith has become known as typosquatting.

In transferring all 43 names to the search engine company, the WIPO panellist said: the present case is a blatant and egregious example of the kind of bad faith which the ICANN policy addresses However, he said he added that he did not feel empowered to grant AltaVista’s request for a blanket order to Network Solutions ordering all domain names registered by Grandtotal consisting of similar misspellings of AltaVista be transferred.

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