State of Florida Claims Rights to Four Domains

Domain name disputes rarely involve government entities, but in this case, the State of Florida recently filed a complaint with the WIPO to gain control over four domains: myfla.org, myfl.org, myfolrida.com and myforida.com.

The state claims the names are confusingly similar to myflorida.com, the trademarked name of Florida’s official web portal. In any case, the government site is a victim of typosquatting, a scenario that occurs when someone registers a misspelled domain name similar to the name of a popular site.

High-traffic URLs like Google.com are misspelled tens of thousands of times per day, so it’s easy to see how someone who owned Gogle.com or Gooogle.com might be able to cash in (Google owns both typo domains).

There’s no way to tell how much traffic the owner of the domains received, but the individual in question did not reply to the complaint, so the WIPO has authorized for the names to be transferred to Florida.

Source: Domain News