John Zuccarini, the subject of dozens of cybersquatting cases, last
week lost a domain name to the Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey in
a case before the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), based in
Minneapolis.
The NAF is one of four bodies authorised to hear domain name
disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy
(UDRP) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN). The domain name dispute process is a popular alternative
to lengthy and expensive trade mark lawsuits.
Cybersquatting is normally taken to mean the bad faith
registration and use of a domain name. Typosquatting is a practice
that relies on a web user to make a “typo” when entering an address
in his or her browser.
John Zuccarini registered kevinspacy.com, a common misspelling
of the actor’s name. According to the NAF, “Zuccarini evidently
profited from advertising directed at internet visitors who made
the typographical error while looking for information about the
actor. In other court proceedings Zuccarini has admitted to
registering thousands of similarly misspelled domain names, which
have earned him close to a million dollars a year in advertising
revenues.”
FAO Schwarz was recently successful with similar action against
Zuccarini over the names faoscwartz.com, foaschwartz.com,
faoshwartz.com, and faoswartz.com where he was using the names to
force visitors to click through multiple pop-up adverts, a practice
known as “mousetrapping”.
Zuccarini did not submit any defence to the arbitration
panel.
