Cybersquatting

The term is derived from "squatting", which is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building that the squatter does not own, rent, or otherwise have permission to use.

[1] In the former definition, the cybersquatter may offer to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.

[1] Because of the various interpretations of the term, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in a 1999 report, approved by its member states, considered it as the abusive registration of a domain name.

[2][3] Since 1999, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has provided an administrative process wherein a trademark holder can attempt to claim a squatted site.

Trademark owners in 2021 filed a record 5,128 cases under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)'s Arbitration and Mediation Center, eclipsing the 2020 level by 22%.

The surge pushed WIPO cybersquatting cases to almost 56,000 and the total number of domain names covered past the 100,000 mark.

[5] The accelerating growth in cybersquatting cases filed with the WIPO Center has been largely attributed by the WIPO Center[6] to trademark owners reinforcing their online presence to offer authentic content and trusted sales outlets, with a greater number of people spending more time online, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For example, according to the United States federal law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), cybersquatting is registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.

They created a web page (the Internet domain of which was www.alfatelevision.org) and opened a bank and PayPal account for donations made to the association.

Sometime later, there were some disagreements between the members of the association and the four defendants who opened a new website, changed the internet domain and the passwords of the accounts, which redirected all the donations from the followers.

In this sense, it highlights that there are elements that did not concur in this case and that the actions carried out by these individuals (creation of another domain, change of passwords...) occurred prior to their termination and that, therefore, they were in willingness to do it.

Secondly, if the intention was to use the domain name in a deceitful way to cause an error in the transfer of assets, the accused could face a crime of fraud.