A report released yesterday by Professor Robert Connor of the University of Minnesota estimated that up to 25% of “Sunrise Period” registrations were fraudulent. His conclusions were reached by checking the WHOIS database of those who registered 11,500 .info names.
During the Sunrise Period, 12% of registrations were for domain names which, although not identical to trademarks, were very similar to trademarks. A further 6% of registrations had a blank trademark name entered on their registrations, with another 11% showing an error in the trademark number. 21% of registrations had their trademark number duplicated in another registration. Added to this were 23% of registrations where the trademark dates given were outside the date range required by Afilias, the consortium managing the .info roll-out.
Critics of the allocation process say that Afilias made it too easy for cyber-squatters to claim .info domain names without proper trademarks.
Major companies such as America On-Line and Apple have already failed to secure their .info names. The aol.info name has been registered by a UK woman who claims to offer “activities on-line”.