Survey reveals extent of intellectual property abuse on-line

Meta tags are HTML coding that most web sites use to let search engines know what their sites are about. Meta tag abuse is usually where one site contains the names of its competitors in its meta tags to divert traffic to its own site. This can amount to trade mark infringement or a legal wrong known as passing off, where one business passes itself off as being associated with another.

Between May and September 2000, over 4,000 intellectual property specialists in both Europe and the US were asked by Net Searchers for their feedback on the current state of the industry.

The company’s Net Protection Survey 2000 involved questioning law firms and in-house intellectual property lawyers within a wide range of industries, ranging from IT to biotechnology or sports marketing, who all deal with intellectual property issues.

The survey reveals that there has been a massive growth in all types of intellectual property infringement since 1998. In a comparison of results the new survey found:

• 90% of respondents have experienced domain name infringement on the internet. This marks a 5 per cent increase from 1998.
• The number of Parody sites has risen by 2200 per cent.
• Counterfeiting has increased by 1650 per cent.
• Metatag infringements have risen by 1280 per cent.
• Copyright infringements saw a 105 per cent rise.
• 90% of infringements experienced by respondents were in the .com jurisdiction, followed by Britain’s .co.uk suffix and Germany’s .de.

The survey also found that 70% of those questioned have had to negotiate large sums for the purchase of a domain name, a further increase of 10% since 1998.

Over half of the survey’s respondents found themselves paying third parties significant amounts for domain names – the most frequently paid sums being in the £15,000 to £25,000 bracket, followed by the £1,000 to £5,000 price range. The highest figure paid for a domain name among those surveyed was £500,000.

96% of respondents wanted to see adoption of the Universal Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), the rules that are presently used by WIPO and others in .com, .org and .net domain name disputes, across country domains such as .uk and .fr. The take-up by country registries of the UDRP has been slow.

81% of respondents were in support of the introduction of the proposed European .eu domain name suffix. Over three quarters thought that .eu should take measures to protect famous names to ensure that names are only sold to those with a legitimate claim.

There was also support for the introduction of new gTLDs, with over 77% in favour. ICANN, the technical co-ordination body of the internet, recently announced seven new Top Level Domains including .pro, .info, .biz, .museum, .coop, .name and .aero. It is expected that all new TLDs will be up and running by June 2001.

The survey’s findings revealed that few companies are taking adequate measures to protect themselves from further fraud, despite recognising how important IP protection on the net is to a modern organisation. Only two thirds of respondents currently undertake domain name watching and only half use a domain name renewals management service.

Commenting on the survey findings, Nick Wood, Director of Net Searchers, said:

“The protection of intellectual property on the internet is about creating the right environment in which e-commerce can flourish for customers and users alike. Businesses need to be confident that when users tap in the name of their company, they can reach it without being ambushed by a pornographer, an activist or someone else trying to exploit that name”.

“This survey shows just how concerned trade mark owners are at increasingly high levels of infringement. I firmly believe there needs to be more debate on the policies of the domain name registries who allow anyone to register anything without undertaking any checks and the value of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure. This system, introduced at the start of the year, has now enabled nearly 1,000 trade mark owners to win back stolen .com names held at a registry in the US from the pirates – yet no European registry has yet adopted it”.

“It is of great concern to us that .UK is becoming the domain of choice for infringers because the authorities do not have a practical system in place to help those who have been ripped off. When jurisdictions like the Cocos Islands (.cc) or the Cook Islands (.co.ck) offer better protection than the UK, something should be done!”