Facebook Cybersquatting Concerns Prove Valid

It’s only been three days since Facebook launched its new vanity URL system, an event that many intellectual property experts claimed would result in a flurry of cybersquatting. Well, they were right.

Since the service’s launch three days ago, hundreds of celebrities, companies, and even royalty have had vanity URLs created by others without their consent.

Charlie Nordholm, a conniving lad from Hawaii, took it upon himself to register facebook.com/princecharles/. While he may have Prince Charles’s username, he won’t be seeing the likes of Buckingham Palace any time soon.

Facebook is already starting to take action. A West Midlands woman by the name of Jordan Bromley registered www.facebook.com/peachesgeldof/ on Friday, but now her Facebook is unavailable.

I think the vast majority of these username registrations are not cases of cybersquatting, but people just doing it as a joke or for attention. The vanity URLs are non-transferable and Facebook is able to take them away without warning.

Source: Ireland Online
Photo: Flickr

Trademark Holders Concerned About Facebook Vanity URLs

Later today, Facebook will begin allowing users to register their own vanity URLS, such as http://www.facebook.com/danielfoster. While many users are eagerly awaiting this opportunity, trademark holders are concerned this might be an opportunity for cybersquatting to occur.

Trademark lawyers are urging their clients to get on Facebook as soon as possible and register their trademarks. Otherwise, they claim the intellectual property could be registered by cybersquatters and exploited, just like in the domain industry.

This is really a way for someone who has a distinct or famous trademark to let Facebook know that others should not be allowed to register that page. They can just say, ‘Please don’t let anyone use my registered trademark,’” said Brian Fergemann, a partner and intellectual property attorney at Winston & Strawn.

Earlier this month, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa filed a lawsuit against Twitter over cybersquatting, claiming another user registered his name and used it to defame him.

Registration for the new URLS will begin at 12:01 Eastern Time. Facebook is not turning a blind eye to the issue and has set up a form where trademarks can be registered ahead of time.

Source: Law.com

Sonic sues company for mysonic.com

Sonic Corporation, the American fast-food restaurant chain, famous for its drive-in-diner style of service, is suing a company over its use of the domain mysonic.com. According to the lawsuit, Bright Orange Software Inc, registered the domain, a “well known trademark” of Sonic, and used it to redirect visitors to Burger King’s website, bk.com.

The federal suit is seeking $100,000 in damages, claiming that Orange Software was using mysonic.com to “advertise and promote the goods and services offered by Burger King, a direct comeptitor of Sonic.” Bright Orange Software was not available for comment, and there seems to be no legitimate reason for their usage of mysonic.com. It is also unclear what, if anything, the company gained by allegedly redirecting traffic to bk.com.

Sonic is arguing that the Bright Organge’s use of mysonic.com constitutes cybersquatting, the illegal practice of registering a domain, holding it, and attempting to negotiate a high-priced payments from the trademark owner.

Source: Trading Markets
Photo: Flickr

Google's new change of address tool

Not to be outdone by the postal service, Google has introduced a highly requested feature that allows website owners to inform Google when they have moved to a new domain name. The “change of address” tool updates Google’s index to reflect your new URL. The changes last 180 days during which time the complete re-indexing will be completed.

Google requires website owners to be verified before they can report a domain move. Methods of verification include adding a meta tag to the home page of the site or uploading an HTML file to the server specifying some piece of information only Google would know, which they assure will not be used for anything else, due to their commitment to privacy.

Webmasters must make sure that both the old and new domains are verified before proceeding. Those who already use Google’s website tools are automatically verified. They also must ensure that their sites are not subdomains. Also, the change can only be made once per site. Google has not specified if there is a time limit on this.

Photo: Flickr

'Typosquatters' cash in on user mistakes

According to the web security company McAfee, a new business phenomenon is sweeping the Internet, and like so many before it, the intentions are less than pure. Most have heard of cybersquatting, when an individual or business registers a domain that is identical or strikingly similar to the trademark of another, holding it hostage until the victim pays a large ransom. With typosquatting, the perpetrators do not even worry about the trademark owners at all.

These sinister entrepreneurs register domain names that are close to major domain names, with the exception of a few typos. For example, if you want to go to internetblog.org.uk, but you accidentally type internerblog.org.uk, you might find yourself on a site filled with nothing but ads. If you click on an ad (or in some cases even if you do not), you have just made someone money.

In 2003, the United States made it illegal for domain companies to redirect users to sites that might be deemed harmful, such as pornography. However, simply selling ads to people has resulted in only small penalties, sometimes only involving turning over the questionable domain to the trademark owner. The real victims, however, lose valuable time, and some cases even money.

Phil Lodico, vice president of the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, said the problem is huge and is expected to explode further with the approval of new Internet domain name suffixes such as “.car” and “.travel.”

“At minimum, it’s an annoyance; at worst it’s a threat to the stability of online transactions,” Lodico said.

Source: Detroit News

Facebook to Offer Vanity URLs

This week Facebook is expected to announce a new feature: vanity URLs. The new web addresses will make it much easier for people to be found and market themselves. Rather than have the normal http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=xxxxxxxxx, users will have the chance to register http://www.facebook.com/yourname.

Sites like Flickr, Twitter, and LinkedIn have offered this feature for years. Facebook has allowed businesses and celebrities to have vanity URLs in the past, but never the general public.

There will be restrictions, however. No URLs may contain trademarks or generic keywords. So http://www.facebook.com/viagra and http://www.facebook.com/freecreditreport will be simply out of the question.

This is all part of Facebook’s strategy to market their profiles as a catch-all online identity. It’s realized the competition is doing something right for once and doesn’t want to be left in the cyber dust.

Right now it is looking like the vanity addresses will be first-come first-serve. But there is also speculation that the social networking site might charge for the feature. If so, you can count me out.

Source: TechCrunch