John Zuccarini and his company Cupcake Patrol were sued by
Electronics Boutique under US cybersquatting legislation that does
not exist in Europe.
Cybersquatting is normally taken to mean the bad faith
registration and use of a domain name. In the UK, an aggrieved
trade mark owner in these circumstances can bring a case before
national courts, relying on trade mark law and a legal wrong known
as passing-off. Alternatively, cases can be taken to a panel of the
World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
In the US, aggrieved parties have the additional choice of
bringing a case under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection
Act of 1999 which provides for the remedy of damages up to $100,000
for each offending domain name. For any action under the Act it
must shown that there was “deliberate, bad-faith and abusive
registration of internet domain names in violation of the rights of
trade mark owners”.
Mr Zuccarini registered five domain names that were misspellings
of names used by Electronics Boutique, such as
eletronicsboutique.com. This type of cybersquatting is also known
as typosquatting because it relies on a web user to make a “typo”
when entering an address in his or her browser.
Accidental visitors to Mr Zuccarini were, in the Judge’s words,
“mousetrapped in a barrage of advertising windows, featuring a
variety of products, including credit cards, internet answering
machines, games and music. …Sometimes, after wading through as many
as 15 windows, the internet user could gain access to EB’s web
site.” Mr Zuccarini earned between 10 and 25 cents from advertisers
for every click through an advert. US District Judge Berle M.
Schiller of Pennsylvania found that John Zuccarini’s typosquatting
business earned him annual advertising revenues of up to $1
million.
Judge Schiller took the view that Mr Zuccarini should pay the
maximum damages under the Act because he had registered the names
after other courts had passed orders to stop his practice in
connection with a number of other companies. Accordingly, he was
ordered to pay damages of $100,000 in respect of each of the five
names he registered in the present case.
