typosquatting

This evening while surfing the net for the latest happening in the IT world, I came across this news headline: "Microsoft sues domain name registrar for typosquatting." This was followed by about 30 seconds of head-scratching. Typo-what?! Apparently, the practice of "typosquatting" or as some would call it, "cybersquatting", is the act of snatching up domain names that are confusingly similar to a popular company's marks in order to profit from Web advertising. According to IT World, "typosquatting is the practice of registering domain names that contain misspellings of trademark terms. Cybersquatting is the registration of a variant of a trademark."

The offense is basically a form of trademark infringement, rooted in the protection of one's intellectual property. In this instance, the domain registrar that Microsoft is suing is called Red Registrar, which according to Microsoft owns the following domain names: windowslivecare.com, msnmesnger.com and ageofmathology.com. As the IT World article reported, web surfers may be tricked into clicking ads on the typosquatting sites instead of the true Microsoft sites. In IP Rights terms, the bogus sites get to ride on the goodwill of the goodwill of the popular company's name and amass profits from this.

The suit was filed by Microsoft against Red Registrar in Seattle on December 4, but was actually precedented by similar law suits filed by other big names such as Yahoo and Dell against another domain registrar.

In this day and age, more and more suits are being filed with causes of action rooted in intellectual property. These suits are being complicated by the element of information technology. I wonder how many more curiously named causes of action will arise in the future, such as typosquatting.