Cybersquatting has become a lucrative business for practitioners and a major problem for brand owners as web advertising systems have made it easier and easier for website owners to make money from mistaken visitors to sites with seemingly familiar addresses.
Many of the millions of cybersquatted domain names in the world use addresses which are identical or similar to existing brands in order to attract traffic and advertising income from people who mistakenly think a site belongs to the brand owner or mis-type a genuine address.
WIPO's figures confirmed that the problem is a growing one. It ruled on 2,156 complaints about cybersquatting in 2007, 18% more than the number it adjudicated on in 2006 and 48% more than in 2005.
"These increases confirm that cybersquatting remains a significant issue for rights holders,” said Francis Gurry, deputy director general of WIPO.
The greatest numbers of actions to reclaim domain names held by alleged squatters were in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology, banking and finance and internet and IT sectors, WIPO said.
The cases were taken to WIPO under its Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), a process under which an arbitrator decides whether or not a domain name is the subject of cybersquatting.
The arbitrator applies WIPO's rules to the case and cannot rule on questions of disputed fact, and it does not replace the courts, so that either party can take a court action.
WIPO said that 85% of its UDRP panel decisions have resulted in the transfer of a domain name from its existing owner. The remaining 15% of the cases on which panels ruled said that the current owners could keep the domains.
A quarter of the total number of complaints were settled before they reached a panel, though, said WIPO.
WIPO said that some of the problems with cybersquatting are exacerbated by domain name registration companies, or registrars. Their number has ballooned from a handful to more than a thousand since 2000, the organisation said.
"In certain instances the intended functioning of the UDRP is frustrated by non-compliant domain name registration provisions, the failure by a registrar to provide complete or correct registration information for a filed UDRP case, simple uncontactability of the registrar, ‘cyberflight’-related or other modifications to registrant data after a complaint is filed, and in some instances, failure to properly implement transfer decisions," said a WIPO statement. "Rights holders, panels and the Center have felt the effects of the increasing complexity posed by these developments."
Some of last year's disputes centred on famous people, organisations and events in the news. Domain names under dispute included references to Facebook and MySpace; the 2010 World Cup; Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation, and The Prince’s Trust.
