A plumbing business in Pennsylvania has become the subject of a cybersquatting case after it registered more than 200 separate domain names.
Gillece Services has hundreds of Web addresses under its belt — all of which are related to the plumbing industry.
Many of the domain names are just misspellings of Gillece and include the names of towns that the company operates in.
However, the ownership of 13 of the firm’s domain names is being contested by rival companies, which claim that Gillece is using cybersquatting techniques to boost its own Web site’s traffic.
Fagnelli Plumbing is one of the companies to have filed a lawsuit against Gillece over the firm’s registration of the domain name Fagnelli.com.
Another plumber, Mark Nix, is also concerned about Gillece’s decision to register marknixplumbing.com.
Speaking to the Post-Gazette, Mr. Nix said, “I think it’s the wrong thing to do for Gillece to go [and] take my website and put his name over top of mine.
“He’s a big enough company, he really doesn’t need to do something like that.”
Recently, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favour of increasing the powers judges have when dealing with domain name disputes.