Abuse: Cybersquatting

Wikipedia defines “cybersquatting” as the following:

Cybersquatting, according to the United States federal law known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.

An example of this practice would be someone that buys the “iphone.com” domain after Apple Computer announces a new product called the “iPhone” and then tries to sell it to Apple at a very high price.

Most companies, like Apple Computer, do not approve of other entities including Apple branded or trademarked names (“apple ipod”) in a domain name.

Some people think domain name parking, in any form, is the same as cybersquatting. Someone who is leveraging the traffic from say a category name (“digitalcamera.com) but has nothing to do with the digital camera business. People in the digital camera business are now locked out of the ability to use this domain.