Legal News

One of the domain world’s most notorious criminals, John Zuccarini, was busted again for typosquatting.    Instead of forwarding traffic to porno like he did last time, Zuccarini was sending visitors to websites containing legitimate products.    Zuccarini’s typosquatting violated the law, and he was surprisingly caught again.    According to    MarkMonitor CMO, Frederick Felman, “He must not be a very smart criminal.”    An expert from the article:

A so-called typosquatter who served pornographic advertisements on domains such as Bobthebiulder.com and teltubbies.com has been fined again by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

John Zuccarini has agreed to give up US$164,000 in typosquatting revenue he is alleged to have raked in, the FTC said Tuesday in a statement. Five years ago, a federal court had barred Zuccarini from registering domains that are misspellings of legitimate brands, a practice called typosquatting, but he ignored the order, according to Carolyn Hann, a staff attorney with the FTC.

“He was engaging in practices that violated certain provisions of the order,” Hann said. “He had certain domain names that were transpositions or misspellings of popular domain names.” — Source: PC World

Not only was the Complainant’s transfer request denied, the company was found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking.    It’s good to see cases like this go in favor of the Respondent, as we have seen too many generics lost recently (MBF.com, Aspire.com, and Aman.com are just a few examples in my opinion).    

Unfortunately, because of the way the system was set-up, some people are almost encouraged to file a UDRP for $1,500 rather than attempt to buy the name for much more than this. The most recent sale price for FCC.com was $60,000 (from the decision), so it probably would have taken well over $100,000 for the owner to sell – although he develops his names.    It’s harmful that the company was able to take a chance at receiving control of this great name for a mere $1,500 filing fee.    

The Respondent had to spend quite a bit of money defending his rights to the domain name, but was smart in choosing John Berryhill to represent his rights. It’s too bad he can’t file a claim to recover his expenses for this Reverse Domain Name Hijacking attempt.

LexisNexis, the leading legal information database, launched a new guide focused on domain name law.    As domain name ownership becomes more mainstream, it has become essential for attorneys to be knowledgeable about various aspects of domain name law.    From trademark owners protecting their rights to domain name owners protecting their valuable assets, legal representation is more important now than it has ever been in the past.

Some topics covered in the new guide include:

“Formal and informal dispute procedures, with analysis
Extensions currently associated with each jurisdiction
Registry contact information
Access to lists of known accredited registrars
Registration and transfer processes and procedures
Renewal terms and processes
Chapter appendices setting out forms, registry policies, examples, and other hard-to-find, practical information
Thousands of direct links to domain registries and other important sources of information on the Web” — Source: DomainInformer.com

While this information will be invaluable to lawyers who are new to the field of domain name law, there are a few experienced lawyers who I can either personally recommend, or I have heard positive things about from others.    A few well-known and respected domain name lawyers are listed below with their website contact information:

John Berryhill
Brett Lewis
Howard Neu
Stevan Lieberman
Ari Goldberger