Cybersquatter told to quit Wall Street Journal sites

GENEVA (Reuters) -- U.N. arbitrators ruled on Wednesday that a United States resident must give up two domain names he had registered that were confusingly similar to the trademark of U.S. daily newspaper Wall Street Journal.

The Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which runs an arbitration system to evict cybersquatters, or Internet users who register famous names in hope of making quick profits, said the two sites had been registered in bad faith.

It ordered John Zuccarini, a resident of Andalusia, Pennsylvania in the United States, to give up the two misspelled domain names, www.wallstreetjounal.com and www.wallstreetjournel.com, following a complaint by the Wall Street Journal, which is published by Dow Jones & Company.

According to a WIPO statement, Zuccarini was a "wholesaler" of Internet domain names and had registered many with misspellings of famous marks or personalities in the hope of diverting Internet traffic to his sites.

A WIPO panel ordered the transfer of the sites, saying that Zuccarini had no legitimate interest in them and that they were confusingly similar to the Wall Street Journal's trademarks.

As domain names have become more valuable with the meteoric rise of the Internet, a market has emerged for opportunists to grab Web addresses simply by being there first in the current system, which is largely first-come, first-served.

The fast-track arbitration system of WIPO, the specialized U.N. copyright and intellectual property agency, allows firms and individuals to avoid costly lawsuits in cases when mischief appears the obvious motive or serious money is at stake.

WIPO has received more than 1,000 cases related to disputed domain names since its arbitration system began last year. Decisions were made in more than half of the cases, some 80 percent of which resulted in favor of the complainants.

Companies that have won back their names from alleged cybersquatters through WIPO so far include Christian Dior, Deutsche Bank, Microsoft, Nike, IKEA and the Internet media giant Yahoo! Inc.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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