It is of paramount importance that businesses take steps to protect themselves against cybersquatting activity, according to one law firm.
Stacey Jones and Sally Britton of Pitmans LLP explained that the surge in global internet usage in recent years has resulted in domain names becoming precious and sought-after commodities.
Cybersquatters have inevitably sought to take advantage of this, the lawyers noted, and many companies have become targets, reports Lexology.com.
“Cybersquatting is the registering, selling or using of a domain name in bad faith with the intent of profiting from the goodwill of someone else’s trademark,” they said.
“It generally refers to the practice of buying up domain names that use the names of existing businesses and trying to sell them back to a party for an inflated price.”
Ms. Jones and Ms. Britton said companies can take a number of steps to defend against cybersquatting, such as conducting searches prior to registration, registering domain names as trademarks, registering common misspellings, monitoring online activity and managing online real estate.
They said that if a firm misses the opportunity to prevent cybersquatting proactively – by snapping up ‘at risk’ domain names – they should seek to resolve any disputes effectively and efficiently.